Is Keir Starmer the new Harold Wilson?

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The Spectator

News, Daily News, Politics

4.4 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2024

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's another busy few days for the Prime Minister as he chairs the inaugural meeting of the Council of Nations and Regions today, marks 100 days in office, and hosts an investment summit on Monday. With the absence of Sue Gray looming large, James Heale unpicks the politics behind these milestones with Katy Balls and the Financial Times's Stephen Bush. They share some lessons from history and the welcome, or perhaps unwelcome, comparison with former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

Also on the podcast, they discuss the merits and pitfalls of potential Conservative Party rule changes. Could their era of rapid defenestration soon come to an end?

Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The Spectator magazine is home to wonderful writing, insightful analysis, and unrival books and arts reviews.
0:06.0	Subscribe today for just 12 pounds and receive a 12 week subscription in print and online.
0:11.2	Alongside that, you get a 20-pound John Lewis or Waitrose voucher.
0:14.8	Go to Spectator.co. UK.
0:16.9	forward slash voucher. Hello and I'm joined today by the Spectator's political editor Katie Balls and Stephen Bush of the Financial Times.
0:34.3	Now Stephen, today Kiasdama is having the inaugural meeting of the Council of Nations and
0:39.2	Regions. Talk us through this plan, obviously set up based on the recommendations of Gordon Brown in 2022 and
0:44.4	why Kiest Armour and neighbour feel the need to have these sort of meetings on a more formal basis going forward?
0:49.2	Well, in some ways this is the unfinished business of one of the implicit assumptions of the
0:55.0	1999 New Labour Devolution settlement which turned out not to be true right
0:59.3	which was that there were two implicit assumptions in that settlement.
1:02.6	The first was then, broadly speaking, the person running the Scottish government
1:06.4	and the person running the Welsh government and the person running the government in London would all be labour politicians and they would all
1:15.4	therefore get together at Labour conference or at the NEC or whatever right but they
1:19.4	would have plenty of regular moments to meet and talk and then second was not would be in the EU
1:26.3	right so then there would therefore be a shared regulatory framework across a bunch of
1:30.8	things where there's a live debate about whether you know about where now these
1:34.8	powers have come back where they should come back to and then the second is their
1:39.7	growth agenda and the fact that obviously one of the biggest and I suspect most enduring
1:45.6	legacies of the last conservative government is the creation of these
1:48.6	combined Authority metro mayors and so it's partly about going okay how what do you have so we used to have well still have the joint ministerial council which is
1:56.8	You know for one of our default volvertooth but basically what do you have as an as a way for these various levels of the UK's now quite developed Devolution
	...

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