The Edition: is Labour too close to the City – with Lionel Shriver & Robert Hardman

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🗓️ 27 February 2026

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

Britain’s banks have a hold over Rachel Reeves, declares Michael Simmons in the Spectator’s cover piece this week. Almost two decades on from the 2008 financial crash, the UK has failed to reform the system and – as ordinary people face a cost-of-living crisis – Labour is in hock to big business. Is the Chancellor too close to the City?

For this week’s Edition, host Lara Prendergast is joined by economics editor Michael Simmons, columnist Lionel Shriver, and columnist from the Daily Mail Robert Hardman.

As well as Labour’s relationship with the banking industry, they discuss: the hit BBC show Industry; how the Royals have frozen out (former Prince) Andrew – and whether removing him from the line of succession is ‘performative’ or not; Lionel’s new book on immigration A Better Life; why young Brits increasingly want to be more Australian; and finally, what’s so good about a moustache?

Produced by Patrick Gibbons. Catch up with Industry S4 now on BBC iPlayer. Watch the season finale on Monday 2nd March on BBC One.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the edition from The Spectator.
0:08.0	I'm Lara Prendergast, the Spectator's executive editor, and the latest issue of the magazine has just gone to press.
0:15.0	To discuss what's in it, I'm now joined by our economics editor, Michael Simmons, our columnist, the author Lionel Shriver,
0:23.2	and the Royal Commentator and Daily Mayor columnist Robert Hardman.
0:32.3	This week's cover has the headline banking on it, and in it, Michael looks at the increasingly close relationship
0:38.5	between Rachel Reeves and the city. So Michael, how close is that relationship right now?
0:43.8	We should start off by saying this is not a new invention of this Labour Chancellor. The Treasury
0:49.5	has always been close to the city. And there's structural reasons for that. The Treasury is the
0:56.4	policy owner for financial services. So that has to be one of its core focuses. But what's
1:03.0	interesting about Rachel Reeves and this Labour government is you would probably think,
1:08.1	you know, after the election, that maybe they would want to change that relationship a bit. Maybe they would look at some of the voices on the left side of
1:15.5	the Labour Party. Maybe they would look at small businesses, businesses in local areas. But actually,
1:21.1	the opposite of that has happened. What we've seen is a ramping up of the engagement between
1:26.7	the Chancellor and the city. And it's
1:28.9	what one Treasury advisor described to me as a Foistian bargain, a Faustian bargain has come about here,
1:35.0	where this is not some kind of conspiracy where there's actually been a deal and a handshake.
1:39.8	But basically, in the run-up to the election in 2024 and through the first two budgets,
1:46.1	the Chancellor has got a lot of flat and she was desperate for some kind of credibility.
1:52.4	And she quickly worked out that if she essentially did nothing to the banks,
1:56.5	so not imposing things like the surcharge on banks' profits, not going too far on something
2:03.2	called carried interest, then the banks would repay her by saying nice things about her
2:09.5	to give her this credibility. And people on the left of the Labour Party and people in the
	...

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