This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘Keir Starmer’s debut on the global stage’
George Parker
Before we begin, we’d love to hear a bit more about you and what you like about the Political Fix show. We’re running a short survey and anyone who takes part before August the 29th will be entered into a prize draw for a pair of Bose QuietComfort 35 wireless headphones. I’ve put a link to the survey in the show notes, along with terms and conditions for the prize draw.
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Robert, did you watch the football?
Robert Shrimsley
I did watch the football, yes.
George Parker
Did you enjoy it?
Robert Shrimsley
I enjoyed the last couple of minutes.
George Parker
Stephen?
Stephen Bush
I watched it in a block of flats and there’s a Dutch guy on the fifth floor, and you can never work out if he’s happy or sad. And so the brief moment’s, like, is he happy? And it’s like, no, he’s sad.
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George Parker
Yes, England are in the Euro finals. And in other good news, British economy grew at double the expected rate in May. And that yellow thing in the sky has finally made an appearance. You’d be forgiven for thinking we’re in a Richard Curtis film. But no, this is Political Fix from the Financial Times with me, George Parker, keeping the seat warm while Lucy Fisher is in Washington with Keir Starmer for the Nato summit. All being well, Lucy will dial into the show later on, but here in the studio with me are Robert Shrimsley.
Robert Shrimsley
Hi, George.
George Parker
And Stephen Bush.
Stephen Bush
Hi, George.
George Parker
Plus, a little later, our UK correspondent William Wallis is on hand to talk us through the government’s plans to reform the mess that is the British prison system.
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So I was lucky enough to have been at The Killers concert at the O2, where the England match was broadcast live into the auditorium before they blew red and white streamers out over the crowd on the final whistle before they went straight into “Mr Brightside”. So it was an absolutely incredible occasion and it just made me think at the time. How lucky is Keir Starmer heading to Berlin with the England team on Sunday probably to, you know, contend for the first trophy by an England team since I was in a cot. Stephen Bush, growth is up to 0.4 per cent in May. How important is it to get off to a good start as prime minister?
Stephen Bush
I think it’s important, partly because it shapes how everyone in Westminster and large chunks of the media, particularly the broadcast media, which is only what really matters in terms of swing voters, how everyone thinks about everything the Labour government does afterwards. And I think the fact that, you know, there’s a kind of sense of, oh, the United Kingdom’s back. Oh, you know, look, there’s a probably very briefly, but, you know, there’s a brief period where there’s a centre-left president in the White House and a centre-left Labour leader.
I mean, in some ways, it does go to show how actually how low the standards have dropped, particularly in the last two years. And, I mean, if in 2015, someone had said, oh, in the reshuffle, the government’s brought in some experts via the House of Lords, I think we’d all have gone, yeah, no kidding. Isn’t that just what happens in a reshuffle as a matter of course? But the fact that there is this kind of feelgood factor around the government I think is helpful, not least because one of their big missions is to attract more foreign direct investment. So I think it is all helpful, though, as a once football nerd, I feel I should point out that we did win the Euros (inaudible), you know.
George Parker
Very, very good point indeed. Now, Robert, does it actually matter if England win the Euros, do you think? I mean, Keir Starmer’s under pressure now to grant the whole country a bank holiday.
Robert Shrimsley
Well, obviously it matters if you’re a football fan. It doesn’t matter at all politically; it doesn’t matter even slightly. Although I will grant maybe a 1 per cent bump to Stephen’s point that it just makes people feel a little bit better about life in general. But that thing wears off very, very quickly.
And, I mean, I think what Keir Starmer really wants is to set out his stall, but then also have a bit of a quiet period because one of the points he made very effectively, I thought, before he won the election, was that we all want politics to tread a little more lightly on our lives. Now, we do this for a living and we’re really fascinated by all of it. But most normal people just want to get on with life and not have politics intruding on them all the time. So a bit less drama is a good thing.
George Parker
Keir Starmer must be quite grateful to Rishi Sunak for calling the election on July the 4th. It’s right in the middle of a Euros championship where, conveniently, the England team are doing rather well; just before some good growth data came out; immediately before a Nato summit, which Lucy is at, and which allowed him to go straight on to the world stage; and a week before a meeting of the European political community — big gathering of 50 leaders from across Europe — in Britain, which Keir Starmer is going to chair. I mean, it’s a good start for any prime minister, isn’t it?
Robert Shrimsley
Is a good start. It’s all nice. But in terms of things that affect the public, you know, we’re going to talk about prisons a bit later. There’s a crisis in prisons. There’s still a fundamental, you know, issue around the National Health Service. All the core issues are not going away. And he’s inherited a lot of them. One of the reasons why Rishi Sunak went (inaudible), you know, we’ll expect more people coming across in small boats as the summer weather kicks in, when it does.
And so all those reasons that made Rishi Sunak think it wasn’t worth hanging on are now issues that Keir Starmer’s got to deal with. So he gets some nice pictures and gets to frame it all. But, you know, the fundamental problems are still there.
George Parker
Stephen, what do you make of Keir Starmer’s first step onto the world stage? What does it tell us about his approach and where he sees Britain’s place in the world?
Stephen Bush
Well, I think in some ways it’s a continuation of his approach to domestically, which is, as we saw in the government formation, which he’s been conducting largely by telephone while he’s travelling the world. So Keir Starmer is an institutionalist. He’s someone who’s brought back in a lot of people who have been select committee chairs, a lot of people who were ministers in the last Labour government and whose sense of how politics should be done involves being a member of Nato in good standing, a member of the EPC in good standing.
Now, of course, one challenge for him is that era of politics where it was a path to success to be a member of a few international institutions in good standing is in some doubt and will be even more so if Trump does come back. But I think it helps.
One, because it establishes in people’s mind an image of Keir Starmer as prime minister, but also this thing that it gives the Labour party licence to do which of course, any government wants to do when, you know, it’s new and the opposition’s about to have an unseemly fight, is it means that if at the end of July the Labour government essentially goes into a months-long hibernation so the only thing that political journalists write about is Badenoch versus Braverman, Braverman versus Jenrick, Braverman versus the whole Conservative parliamentary party, no one will say, oh, the Labour government hasn’t done anything because they’ve had this moment of him striding the world stage, you know, being a fellow, you know, institutionalist.
I think one of the other striking things, of course, is it does show that he clearly does want to deepen our European relationship again, because he’s picked one of his closest allies and one of his earliest allies, Nick Thomas-Symonds, to be Europe minister.
George Parker
Now, I think we’re gonna be joined by Lucy Fisher in Washington. Lucy, are you there?
Lucy Fisher
Hi, George.
George Parker
Hello. Now, tell us how Keir Starmer is handling his first foreign trip as prime minister. First of all, tell us about the the plane out to Washington. We saw all the pictures of the journalists huddling around the prime minister, the so-called huddle. It’s a bit of a rite of passage for any new prime minister. How did he deal with it?
Lucy Fisher
I thought he was markedly relaxed and confident. My sense has been that he viewed being opposition leader as the business of politics, something that he’s not very comfortable with, knows he wasn’t very good at. But he’s had, it seems to me, this sort of mindset shift since being elected. He thinks he’s now dealing with the business of governing and feels very confident and relaxed.
So yeah, look, I was expecting him to be very cautious in the answers to 20-odd questions put to him by journalists all crowding around him at close quarters, asking him about an array of subjects. But he leaned into a lot of these areas and gave quite a lot of detail on his programme for government, which I thought was interesting. You know, you’d expect him to be very wary of creating any sort of gas, any sort of news lines that could overshadow his debut on the world stage at Nato. But he did feel did feel pretty relaxed.
And certainly at the summit itself, there was a bit of stardust around him. He does seem to be the golden boy. Other European or Nato leaders seem to be lining up for photos with him. I’m told by diplomats that they’ve asked him, you know, how did you win and win so big? So the honeymoon period may not last long, certainly domestically, but for now on the sort of world forum, he feels to be having quite a bit of a moment.
George Parker
It’s amazing what a landslide victory does, doesn’t it? (Lucy laughs) The idea of stardust attaching to Keir Starmer is quite incredible. I’ll just ask you about this huddle because lots of people I think listening will have seen the pictures of journalists gathered around the prime minister on the plane. And some people say it all looks a bit too cozy, everyone’s laughing at his jokes and stuff. But actually, the prime minister is actually exposed to some very tough questioning, I think, on a whole range of subjects in an environment where he can’t escape. I mean, it’s not quite as cozy as it looks, is it?
Lucy Fisher
No. I think that’s absolutely right. And as you say, you know, we are literally surrounding him physically. You know, he’s not given a heads-up in advance. There’s no restrictions on what we can ask him. He’s got to field questions, sometimes do follow ups people spontaneously add in. The UK press pack, you know, works almost like a pack of hounds, you know. It is working in tandem. People bounce off each other’s questions. If he answers one person but doesn’t give sufficient detail, the next journalist might jump in with a follow-up to press him on his answer or ask a supplementary question. So I think it’s a really tough grilling and we’ve learned so much about his views on, you know, public sector pay, on the prisons crisis as well as on, you know, defence spending and all the subjects under discussion at Nato.
The questions aren’t easy. You know, ahead of meeting Joe Biden, he was asked about his manifesto vow for peers to retire at the House of Lords at the age of 80 and asked whether he thought that sort of mandatory retirement age should apply to politicians across the board. Not an easy question to navigate just before you’re about to meet the US president, who is facing so many questions about his mental acuity and physical health.
So look, we’re human, as journalists. He’s human. Sometimes there will be a moment of humour or light relief and sometimes that is captured by people photographing those moments. But it is a really tough grilling and I don’t kind of envy anyone at the centre of not having to field those questions.
Robert Shrimsley
Just to actually validate Lucy’s point, I’m sure you’ll remember this, George. One of the things you start to see when you travel a lot with the prime minister, sort of brand new prime ministers, very, very accessible on the plane. They come back, they’re chatty, they’ve got time. And as their period in office goes on and things get harder and harder, the amount of time they give the journalists on the plane gets shorter and shorter and shorter and they get more and more fed up about having to do it until you’re quite close to the end. And then they could barely make it into the press compartment at all.
George Parker
Actually, just so Robert got on memory lane, I remember when John Major was newly in the job, he used to come back and speak to the journalists and used to come down and spend so much time talking to journalists. Was it John Sergeant? There was someone in the press pack who wanted to watch a film and asked him if he could go away. (Laughter) He wanted to watch a film instead. No, it’s about serious stuff. How did the meeting with Joe Biden go, Lucy?
Lucy Fisher
Well, I know you’ve been talking about the football and the boost that’s given Starmer. It was great timing for the PM that this bilateral meeting at the White House happened just after England beat the Netherlands in the Euro semi-final that, you know, much more reverent, perhaps, than our American colleagues. When we crowded into the Oval Office, one of the UK press pack shouted out, you know, “Mr president, what did you make of the soccer result?” And actually it allowed, you know, the conversation to turn to the football.
And Biden sort of quipped, it was, you know, all due to the prime minister that England had won. So this sort of bonhomie was very much on show. And then Starmer gave Biden, as the formal gift, an Arsenal shirt with the number 46 — of course, a reference to Biden being the 46th president of the United States. And then there was the footage of Starmer watching the match with his Dutch counterpart just as England scored. So there has been a real kind of football flavour to Starmer’s trip to Nato.
But as you ask on the substance of those bilateral talks, I mean, really, really useful for Starmer that Biden seemed to give an oblique endorsement to Starmer’s plan to forge closer UK-EU relations on security and defence, describing Britain as the knot tying the transatlantic alliance together the closer the UK is to Europe. So it’s really useful for Starmer to have that sort of tacit nod about his plans to forge ahead with this new security pact.
And indeed, you know, we’ve just heard from John Healey, the UK defence secretary, saying that between them, Keir Starmer’s brought Healey and David Lammy, his foreign secretary, and Nick Thomas-Symonds, his European relations minister, out to Washington with him. Between the four of him, they’ve had a chance to meet with every 31 of the Nato members at this summit, plus Ukraine, plus the Indo-Pacific Four, who were also invited to the gathering. So it has been this real whirlwind of diplomacy. And, you know, they’re not hiding the fact that a lot of it has on the margins, been pitchrolling for this really important moment for Starmer next week at the European Political Community meeting that Starmer himself is hosting at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.
George Parker
Before we come on to that, can I just ask you very quickly about the sort of rumours swirling around about who the next UK ambassador to Washington will be? We know that Karen Pierce’s time there is coming to an end. Sounds like Keir Starmer is gonna wait and see who wins the presidential elections in November before choosing, but who are the names in the frame?
Lucy Fisher
Yeah, well, look, I’m very much told by government officials that an appointment will not be made until January next year, that, you know, it will be a long and formal recruitment process. Karen Pierce will stay on until the end of this year. That much is agreed. Curiously, Tim Barrow, who Rishi Sunak had wanted to appoint to that role, is here on the trip with Starmer. But as I understand it, you know, his appointment has been overridden and there will be a new choice made.
There’s some interesting names doing the rounds, you know: Peter Mandelson, David Miliband, Cathy Ashton, but also, you know, lots of officials think it could be a career diplomat. It won’t necessarily be a political appointment. So it seems like there’s a lot in the air and a lot riding on the result of the US presidential election.
George Parker
And just finally, Lucy, I’ll let you get back to the Nato summit. I know you’re on your way back soon. You mentioned the discussions about a European reset, as Keir Starmer likes to call it. How have the discussions gone with fellow European leaders ahead of this meeting that you describe next week at Blenheim Palace, where 50-odd European leaders will be meeting in a bit of a talking shop?
Lucy Fisher
Well, it seems to have gone well. He’s had this sort of flurry of brush-bys, tête-à-têtes and formal bilateral meetings. And the most important one, I think, has been with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who has very effusively sort of welcomed the idea of deeper co-operation between the UK and European partners on defence and security. Of course, the UK and Germany are pursuing a deeper bilateral pact on the same front. But certainly, I think against the backdrop of what’s happening in Ukraine with, you know, John Healey talking about the world facing a decade or more of Russian aggression, concerns about how China is backing up Russia’s war machine in Ukraine. It does feel against that, you know, deteriorating geopolitical backdrop that the environment is right for the security pact between the UK and the EU to be forged. So it feels like it’s being warmly welcomed, particularly by Germany.
George Parker
And finally, I think it’s your first visit to the White House. What did you make of the Oval Office? What did you make of the famous White House press room?
Lucy Fisher
It was fantastic to sort of see inside it after having been a kind of a West Wing fan, like everyone else. I was a latecomer, in fact. So I only kind of blitzed through several seasons on maternity leave a few years ago.
But yeah, it’s fascinating. The Oval Office is less sort of cozy. It’s more strip-lit. It has higher ceilings than you sort of expect from some of the photographs. And also interesting to watch how the American press pack works. In one way, they are more reverent. They sort of wait for the principal, Joe Biden, to speak before kind of chipping in. But when the president and the kind of the formal remarks had finished, the barrage that this field, this wall of noise that erupted from the Americans screaming questions at the president was unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed among the UK press pack.
George Parker
How did the president respond? But how did his mental acuity, as people like to say, appear?
Lucy Fisher
Well, he did appear slow in his movements and reactions. He was already sat down along with Starmer when we entered the room. There were a couple of pauses, but I was struck by the ease with which Starmer kind of filled any awkward moments that could have become a bit tense if they’d dragged on. And even though we were only, I’d say, maximum 2m away from the president, I mean, you could barely hear him that the softness of speaking was also really, really marked. So, yeah, I’m interested in how the debate and questions over his mental agility and physical health are dominating and, of course, you know, in many ways have overshadowed the Nato summit. The intervention by George Clooney saying that he should be replaced as the Democratic presidential candidate and Nancy Pelosi coming out on Wednesday seemed to be a real moment. So although obviously what Nato is discussing is really important, in some ways some of the dramatic focus here in Washington seems elsewhere.
George Parker
Lucy, thank you very much. Have a good flight back and have a restful weekend. Thanks very much.
Lucy Fisher
Thanks, George.
George Parker
So Robert, just looking ahead next week, this European political community meeting — this is a forum which was invented by Emmanuel Macron — a lot of European leaders, I think even the Germans, aren’t particularly keen on. I think it is a bit of a talking shop, but it’s a great opportunity for Keir Starmer, isn’t it?
Robert Shrimsley
It is an opportunity. I mean, I think as with all these things, he has a real agenda in terms of trying to push UK back into the European mainstream, if not into the EU, and using security where Britain does, you know, punch above its weight, as they say in European terms, is a really good way to do it.
On the other hand, I sort of feel the hard yards are not gonna be done at, you know, grandiose summits with fantastic backdrops. They’re gonna be done quietly and over a series of weeks and months in detailed negotiations.
And obviously, Emmanuel Macron is not the force that he was when this was set up. So that’s another thing to factor in. He’s got, you know, rather more pressing domestic issues. And I think that’s one of the issues you have. The UK is often out of sync with other important European countries electorally and the nations that matter most in the EU have got very serious domestic issues. You know, Olaf Scholz has got major domestic issues. France is in severe degree of political turmoil.
So the extent to which they really want to sit down and work out new political structures with Starmer is, I don’t know. I mean, he’s gone through most of the work with the commission, to be fair. So, I mean, their idea is to insert a relationship between the UK and the European Commission on defence and security level. So I think that’s possible. But it will be done in dry meetings, not in great settings.
George Parker
And given the political context Robert’s just been describing there, Stephen, in the European Union, is there an opportunity now for Keir Starmer to be the knot, as Joe Biden put it, in the transatlantic relationship between the States and the European Union? Or is that just the kind of thing you say if you were an American president to try and butter up your guest?
Stephen Bush
So in some ways, right, the thing is, is what Biden was saying would have been a commonplace for any US president since the creation of the original European Community, which is that they would rather have the United Kingdom in it as an influential force for Anglo-Saxonism, as it were, than they would rather have it outside of it.
And now, of course, there is an election in November where Joe Biden could be replaced by someone who is not someone who has that typical American position. And there are elections, as Robert has alluded to, across Europe, which could similarly put strain on that relationship.
In some ways — although it is true when Labour politicians talk about how we could have a situation, just as when Macron came in, he was able to poach bits of UK business because he was like, you know, look, they’re doing their weird Brexit thing, look at me, I’m Mr Global, I’m Mr Open — you can’t really be a transatlantic knot between Le Pen and Trump, right? That’s . . . you don’t actually just turn a knot between two sort of different balls of chaos.
However, I think though where I slightly disagree with Robert about the EPC is, yeah, it’s true that it’s kind of weird talking shop and in some ways it’s kind of like the ’90s fantasy of variable geometry where you have, you know, bits of the European project and want to get closer and have a sort of entirely unified. So then you have countries with . . .
George Parker
Turkey and Azerbaijan, now they’re on the outer circle.
Stephen Bush
Yes, yeah. On the outer circle.
George Parker
And Britain, of course, now.
Stephen Bush
Yeah, I mean, and of course, you have one of the slightly — if the polls are right and UK politics is changed — is that of course, the slightly odd thing is everyone in that outer circle would like to be in the EU, but the EU’s like, yeah, you’re a bit of a hassle, you’ve got too many migrants, or in our case, too many Eurosceptics.
But the central problem for Keir Starmer is that although the idea of rejoining is popular in the abstract, and the idea of softening the Brexit deal in the abstract is popular, the second you go, OK, what does this mean for, say, access to the British breakfast table for European farmers, then farmers who we didn’t use to think of as a coalition Labour had to worry about, but they, I mean, won Lichfield by barely fewer votes than they held on to my hometown of Bow and Stepney. And then you have, you know, questions about user mobility schemes. And all of this becomes less popular the second you get engaged in the trade-offs.
But I think in many ways, actually, the big question for Keir Starmer is not just about the elections that happened in France, in the United States; it’s will Liberal Democrats decide to become more vocal advocates for their official policy of closer union? Because if they do, then that will cause Labour MPs who feel pressure from their European flank in their own seats to go, we need to be more vocal on this as well.
Robert Shrimsley
I mean, I think just picking up on the EPC, the meetings happening at Blenheim Palace, I only talk to the people around David Lammy. When you talk to Labour foreign policy people, that’s not the one they’re interested in. They want a direct relationship with the EU and the commission. They like the EPC. They’ll enjoy the Britain-is-back-ery that you’ll get from the pictures, but what they actually care about is putting Britain in the room with the EU itself.
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George Parker
So on the domestic agenda, the new Labour government has got some pretty pressing problems — not least, the crisis in England’s overcrowded prisons. The FT’s William Wallis is here in the studio with us now. William, can you lay out the issues for us?
William Wallis
Well, the most pressing issue of all is that the prison estate is very close to capacity. There’s over 87,000 people in British prisons; the capacity is only a little bit above that. And with new people being sentenced all the time for offences, very soon — as in, in a matter of days — the prison estate will reach full capacity. At that point, you have a situation where police cells start filling up with people. And at a certain point, the courts are no longer able to sentence people because there simply isn’t space in the system.
So unless there is some kind of remedial action by the government, we’re gonna get that kind of a crisis. And we came very close to this last October. And what the Conservative government did was to release some prisoners up to 70 days early.
George Parker
We’re familiar with the idea of new administrations coming in and blaming everything on their predecessors. But in this case, it sounds like they have inherited a genuine crisis.
William Wallis
They have. And actually, the Prison Governors’ Association has said that they’ve been warning the previous government about this for not just months, but for years. It’s a result of longer sentences. It’s a result of more people being on remand. It’s a result of back-ups in court cases. It’s a result of a whole series of things that have been going wrong over a long period of time, which the government hadn’t done enough about.
George Parker
And what should the Conservative administration have done to alleviate the immediate crisis, in your view?
William Wallis
Well, I think you have to look back, almost as far as 1993, when the then-home secretary said ‘prison works’. And we’ve had a kind of penal populism ever since, where we’ve had tougher and tougher sentencing in recent years.
You’ve also had a massive squeeze on investment. So prisons were always an easy target for the government when it was squeezing budgets during the austerity years. And you got huge loss of staff during that period. The investment needed to keep the old Victorian-era prisons going wasn’t put in, the prisons they’d promised to build weren’t built in anywhere like the numbers they promised. And so you’ve had a long period of time where enough just wasn’t done to keep the whole system safe or even humane.
George Parker
And in the run-up to the general election, we did start to see the Conservative administration letting people out before the end of their sentences, but plainly not enough.
William Wallis
Well, actually, Alex Chalk, the previous justice secretary, was willing to do that in a more systematic manner. It happened in a very ad hoc manner, but he was willing to reduce the automatic release date for nonviolent offenders from 50 per cent of the time served to something more like 40. But it was a possibility that produced a backlash on the right of the Conservative party and was canned.
George Parker
And what would actually happen if the prisons were full? I mean, we’ve heard some warnings that you could see civil disorder, that people could go out in the streets committing crimes, knowing they had no prospect of being sent to prison because there wasn’t any space for them.
William Wallis
Well, it’s not completely daft, that possibility, because if you get the whole criminal justice system sort of paralysed and people aren’t being sentenced for serious crimes, then yes, it is possible that people would start to believe they’d get away with it.
George Parker
Robert.
Robert Shrimsley
Well, I think it’s interesting because you’ve got almost a double problem here. You’ve got the immediate crisis, which William’s been explaining, and which they have inherited from the Conservative party. But you’ve also got this longer-term strategy, which we can see exemplified by the appointment of the businessman James Timpson, a noted penal reformer, as the prisons minister, where clearly the Labour party is looking towards taking a different approach on who gets locked up and how many people get locked up.
And the great danger for it, I think, is that these two things get conflated because you have to let some people out now because there’s no spaces. It really only takes one bad reoffending case to change the whole dynamic and make it far harder to pursue that more liberal approach that clearly Labour would like to take.
And the other point, surely, is that you really have to go out and persuade the public, because what happens in issues like this is we try to sneak it under the radar so the public don’t know what’s going on. And actually, if you’re gonna change your prison policy, you actually have to go out and sell that fact to the public. You have to take on, you know, the rightwing tabloids that won’t like it and make a case. And that’s what people haven’t really been prepared to do. Although, as you said, Alex Chalk did to try to start.
George Parker
And William, you wrote a piece this week talking about James Timpson, the new prison minister. Just tell us a bit about how his ideas will affect what we think will be Labour’s long-term plan for prisons.
William Wallis
Well, I think his appointment is certainly a signal that, as Robert says, the Labour government wants to do something different. And what’s been massively missing from the prison system in recent years is the whole notion of rehabilitation. It’s been a system built around retribution.
And James Timpson in his own company — Timpsons, the key-cutters, shoemakers, etc — they’ve had a policy, ever since he was CEO in 2002, of hiring people out of prisons. About 10 per cent of their workforce are ex-offenders. And he has found them very loyal, very good employees. And he’s also helped them on their way out of prison — something that the state has also started to fail to do, because if you are released from prison it’s very difficult to get a job without some kind of support. It’s very difficult to get housing. All those things that he was providing, the state has been failing on.
So I think it signals that the government is going to start to take more seriously what happens in prison to offenders. And, to go back to the point about the immediate and the longer term that you were making, Robert, the strain that the prison system has been under has been part of that. Because if you talk to prison governors, they say that actually, they’re so overcrowded and understaffed that they simply don’t have the time and capacity to do the things that help people to get training and skills inside prison so that when they come out, they don’t reoffend.
George Parker
It’s certainly a fascinating appointment. Stephen, I just wonder whether you think the British public are ready for a more liberal prisons policy.
Stephen Bush
Well, one of the reasons why what you might call Howardism has endured since 1993 is that . . .
George Parker
Michael Howard?
Stephen Bush
Yeah, yeah, the home secretary who, you know, through his landmark act in 1993 and through his “prison works” approach, you know, basically we live in penal policy in the world Michael Howard created.
But broadly speaking, the reason why prisons are now in crisis is that there has been a . . . well, there’s been a push me, pull you in the Conservative party. There’s been a succession of more liberal justice secretaries who’ve had a row with a more authoritarian home secretary. And in some ways, the compromise position has been, oh, well, we’ll have a draconian policy, we just won’t pay for it. I think I was, you know, rereading Tony Blair’s foreword to The Unfinished Revolution this morning and he was, you know, just my . . .
Robert Shrimsley
Just something we all do every day.
Stephen Bush
Yeah, it’s my, you know, regular morning ritual. He talks a lot about a thing that often happens to Labour oppositions where Conservative government has a necessary but controversial reform. Voters kind of reward the Labour party in the polls for opposing the necessary reform, but they kind of intuit that the reform is necessary and in the end, the Conser— you know, he says it’s never a happy ending for us.
I suspect, actually, it’s a similar dynamic now. People understand that we have had a 14-year period in which we have net closed about 15 prisons, 17 closed overall. But of course, you’ve had prisons like, you know, HMP Peterborough, which have opened in that time. People understand that we’ve closed a bunch of prisons, which means that an approach to prison policy focused very largely on deterrence, punishment and prevention — ie, you know, if someone’s banged up, they can’t do it. It’s something that we simply can’t deliver in the short term, which means I think that Labour does have an opportunity where people are going to be receptive to the idea that you’ve got to do something different.
But I think Robert’s exactly right to say that it only takes one particularly nasty reoffending rate. And of course, another bit of the criminal justice system that’s in some trouble is probation. So the people who are being early released are not going to be released early into some great system which transitions them into civilian life. They will be transitioned down to quite a cold, unfeeling world where they will often find that their only employer available is either a key-cutting business or the criminal underworld.
George Parker
Yeah. And William, if we do go down on a more liberal route, and it seems that it’s the direction that Keir Starmer’s embarking on, does that put us out of step with other western countries? Does the prison works approach prevail across most European and certainly seems to be the approach in the United States?
William Wallis
No it doesn’t. And in fact, England and Wales have the highest per capita prison population in western Europe at 159 people per 100,000. If you go to somewhere like Holland, they’ve closed, I think, nearly half their prisons in recent years because they use other forms of punishments than custodial sentences. And their reoffending rates are also better. Because actually, sometimes when you send someone into prison, particularly the condition of prisons in Britain today, you’re sending them basically on an induction course into the criminal underworld. So in many instances, it may be better to keep them out of prison and find some other sort of remedy.
George Parker
William Wallis, thank you very much.
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George Parker
So before we get on to our Political Fix stock picks, can we just touch on the infighting, fairly predictable infighting that’s broken out in the Conservative party since the debacle of July the 4th, which has spilled out into the media, including briefings of Kemi Badenoch’s outspoken comments in the shadow cabinet earlier this week. Robert, what do you make of them?
Robert Shrimsley
Those outspoken comments, which included her apparently berating her cabinet colleagues over leaks from the cabinet and shadow cabinet, and her remarks in some detail made it into the newspapers whether or not she was (inaudible). Who the heck knows?
Look, the Conservatives have suffered this enormous political trauma, and indeed they were suffering it for quite some time before the election, and they’re now in the process of working through it. They’re in the anger and grief stage rolled into one. And they are engaged in a fight not only over who leads them, but over a diagnosis of why they lost and establishing the narrative of their defeat, which will then determine what kind of leader they pick and how they go forward.
And the truth is, they don’t really know the answer to that more important question yet. They’re still arguing over that. And so you’re just seeing shadowboxing and positioning and people trying to make sure that they’re the one from their faction that gets picked as and when this leadership contest kicks off.
But I think the other thing is that this is sort of going to be the last period where people are paying much attention to the Conservatives for quite a long time. And so MPs who are used to having the media dancing on their every word have got a last hurrah here, and they are going to milk it for a while, because once this leadership contest is over, people are gonna stop looking at them for a while.
George Parker
Yeah. And Stephen, Kemi Badenoch who, as Robert said, deplored the leaks of her very leakable comments, we’ll put it like that. She’s down as the bookmakers’ favourite to win the Tory leadership. Do you see it like that?
Stephen Bush
Certainly, if the contest was held tomorrow, it’s very hard, I think, to see past her, given what we know about the Conservative grassroots. However, I do think these leaks show that look, the arguments for Kemi Badenoch as a leader of the opposition is that she’s shown she has several of the requirements to do it well. She’s been politically courageous, including in taking on her own party. You know, her decision to come out against Boris Johnson very strongly in that second leadership election was a key part of why Boris Johnson did not return. She’s, you know, very formidable and certain in herself, from the despatch box.
But when you have such a small parliamentary party and broadly speaking, your front bench is going to be a coalition of the willing and the available, is that quite robust style going to manage, you know, whichever luckless English MP has to be shadow secretary of state for Wales, being gently patronised by Jo Stevens every week till the end of the parliament. And I think I sort of feel like in the scenes, we don’t know how long this contest will be. I feel like that combative side of her is going to cause her leadership bid to unravel before she gets to the members.
Robert Shrimsley
And I think also, she’s although . . . You’re obviously right, she is the frontrunner. And, you know, she’s got one piece of danger which is that ending up falling between two camps. Her attraction is that she’s the one that best straddles the two divisions, and she gets the, you know, the right wing of the Conservative party and through the One Nationy group. But the danger is that actually, Suella Braverman, who’s the most aggressive voice of the right, doesn’t go away, does actually keep batting on, takes the right with her. Somebody else is the sort of mainstream centrist candidate and Kemi Badenoch falls through the middle. I mean, I’m not saying it will happen, but that’s the risk that she’s running.
George Parker
Now the FT Political Fix stock picks are back. Steven, who are you buying or selling this week?
Stephen Bush
Well, linked to that conversation. I am buying Tom Tugendhat because as listeners will know, I have quite enough giant James Cleverly in my portfolio as it is. Tom Tugendhat’s had a quite, I think, very good general election. He has a very, very safe seat, going even after this election, it’s a safe seat. And he used the election very intelligently, turning up where our colleagues needed help on a leaflet round. And I’ve been quite struck at the number of Conservative MPs, you know, when you bump into someone, particularly a contact you like, and because, you know, on election night, you don’t see if she’d go, oh, thank goodness you’re still around. And I’ve been quite struck by the number of contacts who’ve said to me, oh, you know, Tom was really helpful.
George Parker
And of course, you may know, Stephen, may have been there, that Tom Tugendhat had a surprise 50th birthday party this week, to which lots of journalists seemed to be invited, strangely enough.
Stephen Bush
Sadly, I was not. So it’s actually, it’s grieving me to buy stock in him.
George Parker
Well I was there. It was, it was a very, very slightly strange occasion, obviously very . . . We’re celebrating Tom Tugendhat’s birthday. But a lot of newly unemployed Conservative former MPs were there, and it did have a bit of an air of a wake about it. Robert, who are you buying or selling?
Robert Shrimsley
So I’m torn between two people who were drafted into the government without having been in politics. The new attorney-general, Richard Hermer, who I think is an extraordinary, interesting appointment because Keir Starmer has picked this, you know, really well-regarded lawyer and someone who’s not gonna be in the least bit interested in shading his legal advice to suit the politics of the government and of the day, which is what attorney-generals have to do. And you can see that one being, you know, a long fuse.
But on the same principle I’m actually going, and with some reluctance, I’m going to sell shares in James Timpson, who we were talking about, the new prisons minister. Even though I sort of applaud this appointment, I think there’s a lot to like about it, I can just see so many ways in which this goes wrong quite quickly, because you’ve got someone who’s come in, presumably on a promise of being able to drive through his own, you know, fairly well thought through penal policy agenda. And I can just see it hitting the skids as the politics of this become more and more difficult and Labour decide this is one row they can avoid. It’s a long-term sell, but I just have a feeling it will not work. What about you, George?
George Parker
Well, this might be a little bit predictable, but I think I’m going to add a bit of Rachel Reeves to my portfolio. I think she’s had a bit of luck this week, with the growth figures coming in twice as high as people expected at 0.4 per cent, of course, nothing to do with the Labour government.
But, you know, it’s possible that Rachel Reeves gets lucky. She needs luck, because I don’t think the actual growth measures that the Labour party has set out in themselves are gonna be enough to fix all of the long-term problems facing the public finances or the public services.
But what I was struck and I was researching a Big Read for the FT about Rachel Reeves was the sheer amount of goodwill behind her, at least initially. I know that’s gonna evaporate very quickly if you’re the chancellor of the exchequer. But researching it, and I was speaking to people who were in the Treasury on the day she made her sort very assured debut in there, and how the people who were gathering around the window, she was speaking down below, like people are gathered, squeezed in around all the windows in the Treasury to look down at this person who’s the first female chancellor for 800 years. I think you underestimate how important that is, particularly for women working in the government, but also in the Treasury. It’s a really significant moment.
So I spoke to Ken Clarke about her as well. Said she was a sort of decent, sensible person who would do the right kind of thing. So it seems to me there’s quite a lot of cross-party goodwill for Rachel Reeves. But I would say, of course, she’s gonna need it. And of course, at some point I’ll be no doubt looking to dump her like hot potatoes.
Robert Shrimsley
You are buying when stocks are very high.
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George Parker
Well, that is true. 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.
Political Fix was presented by me, George Parker, and produced by Audrey Tinline with Leah Quinn. The broadcast engineers were Andrew Georgiades and Rod Fitzgerald. The executive producer is Manuela Saragosa and original music and mixing is by Breen Turner. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. And Lucy will be back with you on Tuesday.
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