Hello and welcome to the New Statesman podcast.

I'm Deputy Editor Helen Lewis and every week the team and I will be bringing you an exciting mix of discussion, interviews and stories.

This week we discussed reshuffle rumours with Raphael Bear and George Eaton.

Ns bloggers Alan White and Kate Belgrave talk about their investigation into the Coalition's Secret Cuts. And Carolyn Crampton, Laurie Penny and I disagree about Jane Austen.

I'm joined by our politics editor Raffa Rabeer and George Eaton editor of the Stagas

to talk about the week's politics. First up, I think we have to catch up with Labour

post-Ed Miliband's speech this week. George, did it calm the nerves and soothe, you know, troubled times?

It did. I think it was one of the best days he's had, actually. And the Blair intervention

meant that, you know, all of the Blairites who could potentially have come out and said,

he didn't go too far, he's made this mistake, were cal calms and that was a big boost.

And it is a brave step.

The more I think about it, the more radical it seems that it could lead.

It is the biggest transformation in the party's relationship with the unions since it was founded.

And it could mean the loss of millions in funding.

And that sounds very negative.

The gain for Miliband is that he has won the right

now to frame the Tories as the party of big money to say, look, this is my offer of funding reform,

what's yours? And if the Tories don't play ball on that, then he'll be able to hammer them

relentlessly between now and the election as the party in Hock to vested interests.

And practically, we've been talking about him losing 5 million of the 8 million of union funding.

What's the plan to make up for that money?

I mean, the Labour Party's already far more in debt than the other parties put together, right?

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