EMQs: Nick Clegg as Chancellor?
Political Currency
Persephonica
4.1 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 26 January 2026
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why didn’t Nick Clegg become Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 2010 coalition government? Ed Balls and George Osborne take you inside the negotiations that formed the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition in this week’s EMQs. They also discuss why Gordon Brown didn’t make Ed chancellor, and whether it was the original sin of his premiership.
They also discuss the role of academics in policy making, and why American scholars end up more favored than their British counterparts. And, how many U-turns can a government sustain? Ed and George look at the impact of U-turn politics on trust and authority, and discuss how the coalition survived the omnishambles budget?
Finally, the pair consider whether MPs who defect - including recent high profile Tories like Robert Jenrick - should stand down to trigger by-elections. They explain where this has gone wrong historically, and the dangerous precedent it would set for future political rebellions in all major parties.
We love hearing from you, so please don’t forget to send all your EMQs to questions@politicalcurrency and make sure to include a voice note of your question.
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Credits:
Research: Sam Burton
Production: Caillin McDaid, Caitlin Hanrahan & Sam Psyk.
Video Editor: Avi Asher
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 in 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. |
| 0:27.0 | So hello and welcome to EMQs. Now Donald Trump is in a helicopter flying out of Davos. |
| 0:34.2 | And George, I think, has a series of private plane offers from world leaders. But the thing about world leaders, you can't keep them waiting on the tarmac with their little planes. And I don't know who you've chosen to get a lift with, but I know that if we don't get this done in half an hour, then you're going to leave and I'm going to do the final question alone. Am I right? Yeah, the answer to your question is I've chosen to get a lift with that world leader Uber. They're going to drive me to... To London? No, Zurich Airport. Oh, I see. Are you going on a schedule flight? Of course. Oh. I'm not as grand as you, Ed. Oh, I see. I don't get to travel around on Britain One or whatever you do now as, you know, chief spouse. |
| 1:12.9 | Look, I've. I don't get to travel around on Britain One or whatever you do now as, you know, chief spouse. |
| 1:12.9 | Look, I have not been on a private government plane since I was that the Treasury, not for a very very long. |
| 1:19.5 | Oh, is that a violin, I hear? |
| 1:22.6 | It's not a violin. |
| 1:24.8 | Can I just say one thing about our main episode, I was disappointed. In all of the |
| 1:28.3 | stuff about foreign policy and stuff, we didn't talk about Darren Jones, the chief secretary |
| 1:33.4 | of the prime minister's speech on civil service reform in which he said he was going to back |
| 1:39.8 | within the civil service, the doers, not the talkers. And he told me about that in an interview he was giving with me on Good Morning Britain, in which he was talking. But I don't think he wanted to get over to himself. He was talking about other people. But there was an interesting point in his speech where he talked about something I'd never heard about before called the two pizza rule. Right. And the two pizza rule he says comes from America, which is that if you ever, |
| 2:03.4 | when you're trying to kind of reform government or reform an organization, if you ever have a team |
| 2:09.0 | which is big enough to need more than two pizzas, then that tells you that you have got two bigger team. I guess that |
| 2:19.3 | means eight people. I'm not sure what Arsenal would think about that or Man United because |
... |
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