This is political co-ncy. With Ed Bulls and George Osborne.

So hello and welcome to our very special Christmas EMQs.

We have a bottle of champagne here.

Happy Christmas, George.

I persuaded George that it is possible to drink champagne without getting onto the table and swirling the bottle around his head and he has not come in tails and so you know a post-bullington

glass of champagne. Merry Christmas. I think there was a Bullington breakfast once here as well.

Do you still have it? No, of course not. I'm not for 40, you know, 35 years. Do you have reunions?

No. Well, I mean, unless you call the cabinet a reunion. If somebody organized a reunion, who would be the best person to organise that? I mean, Boris Johnson, I think he'd be the right person. David Cameron, he's good at organizing these. If you were to have the whole lot together in one big shin dig. Well, some of them have died. It's quite a binary outcome. Some go on to be prime minister and some sadly die. And how many were there be? There were a couple, very sadly, yeah. No, no, I mean, how many people would come to the reunion? Oh, I don't know, actually. Has it not been totted up? I don't think it's as fashionable as it once was. That's right. I don't know. It's amazing what a photo can do. So, shall we get on to us? There is actually a reunion. Did you know about something called the Canning Club at Oxford? No. There was this kind of... Another one I didn't get invited to. It wasn't a, it wasn't like the Bullying to Club, whatever. It was a kind of discussion group.

You know, each time it met, someone had to present a paper.

And then people sat around and discussed it.

And I was the secretary to the Canning Club.

And there's a reunion on in the New Year.

This is George Canning, the former Prime Minister.

Where was he Prime Minister?

The early part of the 19th century. What was he distinguished for? It's a good question, actually. I think he's sort of seen as a sort of prototype of modern conservatism. I just wish I'd been invited. Well, you were at the Labor Club. Well, I didn't go to the Labor Club. Did you not? I went to one meeting of the Labor Club. The Oxford Labor Club. In my first week, I thought all of you, all the people who later ran the country, like the millibands and whatever, they were in the Labour Club. I went to a meeting of the Labour Club in my first week and they were having a debate about the new Labour Club banner and whether to put on the new Labour Club banner the hammer and sickle and they voted

to put it on and I thought that it's kind of the end of it so I mean who was it James Pernel

Ruth Kelly I don't think any of the miller mans they know I thought they were I was not I was not

participant in that I also went to my first meeting of the the left caucus in K College in my first week, whereby, by the way, my tutorial partner, Paul Johnson, soon to be head of the IFS. He was my economic tutorial partner all the way through. In my first meeting of the left caucus, I said, you know, but surely the market economy is a better way to deliver growth and social justice. You know, I said, what is wrong with capitalism anyway? And they looked at me like I was totally, totally mad. And that was, I didn't go back to left caucus much either. So, you know, I was new labour before new labour was even invented. I know. Tony Blair often says, of all the people who are my strongest supporters, that Ed Balls was number one. Look, I think he's right, but he didn't always understand it.

Shall we get to our first question?

Yeah.

Oh, here's a good one.

Our first question comes from someone we both know,

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