EMQs: Is it time to abolish the state pension triple lock?
Political Currency
Persephonica
4.1 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 8 December 2025
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Will any government be brave enough to abolish the triple lock on pensions? The cost-saving case has been made by many, but Ed Balls and George Osborne explain why it could be politically calamitous to try and ditch it.
They debate William Hague’s theory that, were Rachel Reeves sacked, Keir Starmer would follow and look back at how chancellors and Prime Minister’s fates have been intertwined. Plus - why is Keir Starmer always doodling during PMQs? Is he following the brilliant debate strategy of Obama, or easily bored when being questioned?
Finally, in a preview of our upcoming ‘What If’ EMQs, Ed and George imagine how the 2024 election could have gone, had Reeves followed a path like John Smith in 1992. Would she have avoided her budget nightmares? Or, would we still have Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister?
Don’t forget to send in questions for our upcoming Christmas and ‘What If’ themed EMQs episodes. You can send those to questions@politicalcurrency, and make sure to include a voice note!
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Credits:
Research: Sam Burton
Production: Caillin McDaid & Jack Boswell
Video Editor: Maha Al-Badrawi
Executive Producer: Ellie Clifford
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Chancellor of the Exchequer. |
| 0:02.0 | Getting a lesson from the Shadow Chancellor and how to balance the books, |
| 0:05.0 | it's like getting a lesson from Dracula and how to look after a blood pack. |
| 0:08.0 | Ed Balls. |
| 0:10.0 | As steady as she goes, budget. |
| 0:13.0 | What kind of ship does he think he's on, the Titanic? |
| 0:16.0 | Themary Celeste. |
| 0:17.0 | Welcome to EMQs from Political Currency. |
| 0:20.0 | With Ed Balls and George Osborne. |
| 0:27.1 | So hello and welcome to EMQ's ex-minister's questions. And before we answer your questions, |
| 0:34.2 | we're going to do some provision of different kind of question answers, |
| 0:38.8 | because last week on EMQ's, we talked about the Chris Martin fundraiser that George and I were |
| 0:45.5 | George's rustling papers getting sweets out. Will you please behave? We are... I need a bit of a sugar |
| 0:51.1 | thing. You definitely do. We talked about the Chris Martin fundraiser, where we were both presenting the first quiz round for Sarcombe, UK. |
| 0:57.8 | It was a fabulous night. |
| 0:59.7 | For those of you who bid for the bottle of champagne signed my nine prime ministers, it actually went, including Boris Johnson's signature by the end of it, for over £9,000. |
| 1:09.8 | I didn't know that. |
| 1:10.8 | That's great. And the whole evening raised £80,000 just on that one night. I'm going to say something really, I'm going to say something a bit creepy, crawley, which is I thought you were a really, really good compare. Ed was comparing the whole evening. This is, by the way, a room full of civil servants, politicians, all in the fabulous |
| 1:28.1 | Lancaster House, which is one of the big kind of grand government buildings near Bucking |
| 1:31.7 | Palace, which I think actually my mate David Cameron had allowed as Foreign Secretary to be |
| 1:36.4 | used for this. But it's great that the current Foreign Secretary also allowed Ed Balls in. |
| 1:41.3 | You did a very good job. Thank you. And we raised, I mean, the auction was tens and tens of thousands of pounds. It's the auction, which is the hardest thing. But also, you just got to keep it moving because people complained, you know, that our quiz was too hard. And also there were too many questions. But then, you know, the electoral dysfunction podcast, you know, Beth Rigby, Harriet Harmon, Ruth, Davidson, they had more |
... |
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