The Spectator magazine combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority. Absolutely free. Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher.

Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Katie Bors and I'm joined by Kate Andrews and James Forsyfe.

We've had a speech today, billed as a big speech for Kirst Stama, the Labour leader, and he was talking about

the economy. Kate, it's clear that the Labour Party believed this is a weak spot for them,

polling repeatedly suggests that when voters have concerns about voting Labor, trust on the

economy is a big factor. So what was Kirstama's approach here? And can you talk us through the main

parts of the announcement? The speech felt like he was between a rock and a hard place, because as

you say, Katie, the public don't wildly trust labor when it comes to the economy. And I think he

was trying to put forward some resemblance of fiscal responsibility, but still needed to

differentiate himself from the Conservative Party, which especially in the past year, but still needed to differentiate himself from the

Conservative Party, which especially in the past year, but frankly even before the pandemic,

was pivoting to more spending. Obviously with COVID-19, it's now off the charts. And I thought

it was a bit of a strange speech because the rhetoric was very strong about how the conservatives

didn't care about inequality, about how we needed a more

active state. And yet when it came to the actual policy proposals, he was basically just piggybacking

on the relief packages that the government's brought in, whether that be the furlough scheme or

uplift to universal credit. And he was saying that he would go further, that he would tweak these

proposals. This was not the overhaul. Or, you know, he didn't set himself out in a really different way than perhaps what

the chancellor has done so far. What I found most odd, though, was that his big announcement,

this recovery bond, this British recovery bond, suggested that he thought that the biggest problem that we're

facing is our ability to borrow, the government's ability to access money. If you were to

...