Starmer Turns His Attention To Ukraine (Or Tries To)

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Is that it?

Should I be more gushing and...

I mean, we've been doing this for nearly a decade now, so...

The thing is, I would think that over the last couple of weeks

you've been sort of, what is it, one week on, one week off?

So I lose track about your movements.

Just using my annual leave allocation.

But you're over the origin ring?

Yes, this is the time of year, isn't it?

Because I'll leave year ones from April to April.

Where people tend to realize that...

Next, our livestream of our roto meeting.

Chris, you know what?

You can welcome me back with a classic correction and slash clarification.

We'll have a clarification.

That is the biggest U for Muslim journalists.

No, this is a clarification.

I wrote a correction.

So on yesterday's newscast, which is I was listening to on the way into work on Tuesday morning,

you mentioned the phrase Westminster Wags.

I know what that means.

But some younger members of the newscast team said,

what does he mean when he says Westminster Wags?

Oh, perhaps in playing that I was talking about, like, football as well.

Why is a girlfriend, yeah.

Right, I see.

Yes, I suppose I suppose I was indulging in a bit of sort of journalist,

a bit of the kind of thing that you might see written in a kind of gossip column

in one of the political magazines or perhaps in a newspaper at the weekend or whatever.

To mean somebody who's cracking a middle ranking if that joke.

As opposed to talking about people's partners or wives and girlfriends or anything like that.

So yeah, that is a fair critique from the more youthful end of the newscast team.

Is it an old cove?

Is that a word?

To describe what?

Somebody, somebody.

An old cove.

I think it's not a compliment.

I think I've made it up, but what could it be?

Oh, old cove.

Oh, yeah.

I've just looked it up in the dictionary.

Old fashioned slang, British and Australian, a fellow, a chap.

Ah, I thought I just didn't maybe invent it or word.

I also see here that it refers to a 2023 drama podcast series.

Oh, I've made it by blah, blah, blah, blah.

Right, let's make an absolute of newscasts about what's been happening in the world today.

Newscast.

Newscast from the BBC.

That boy slivered me in the classroom doing our violin lessons.

Can I have an apology, please?

I trust almost nobody.

That daddy has to sometimes do strong language.

Next time in Moscow.

I feel delulu with no salulu.

Take me down the Downey Street.

Let's go have a tour.

Blimey.

Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio.

And it is Chris surrounded by wags at Westminster.

You old cove?

Oh.

Right, shortly we'll be joined by Faisal Islam,

because he's talking about the Chancellor's May's lecture.

I think I remember once Chris you're talking about that saying

was it maize like corn?

Yes.

That is maize named after a person.

It is.

M-I-S.

Not M-A-I-Z-E, or indeed the sort of thing that a country house you might run around trying to find the middle of.

Right, I really need to get back into work mode.

It's frustrating.

It's definitely been holiday mode, right?

Focus, focus, focus.

But actually something important to focus on.

The war in Ukraine, which was kind of back on British soil today,

because for Vladimir Zelensky, the Ukrainian president was back addressing the parliament.

Yeah, and I had the privilege of getting to go into the room.

And you know, it is the risk of sounding pious.

I'm just going to do it anyway, because it's kind of the essence of being a reporter.

You know, the essence of being a news reporter is getting to witness things

and getting to be in the room when things happen.

Now, quite often reporters find themselves the other side of the door to a room

where the stuff is happening, because we're not in there.

You know, for this we were, a handful of journalists alongside MPs and members of the House of Lords.

One of the most extraordinary things I've witnessed journalistically in the last four or five years

was when President Zelensky addressed Westminster Hall in parliament around about three years ago,

pretty much one year in to the war after the full scale invasion in February 2022.

And that was an extraordinary thing to witness, because he is a master communicator.

And at the time then, Adam, he was trying to make an argument about the dangers of war fatigue.

And you know, here we are, three years on, the war very much still live and real.

And then the backdrop of course being that all the headlines are dominated by another war in the Middle East.

And again, I thought you had this master communicator on show, making an argument, twofold argument.

One, that the conflict in the Middle East and the conflict in Ukraine are effectively one and the same thing.

So he described Russia and Iran as brothers in hatred.

And then the other argument he was making was that by necessity, Ukraine has become a pioneer in modern warfare, particularly drones.

And that legacy of learning, if you like, is what Ukraine's allies in supporting his country will inherit both now and after any conflict in terms of how modern warfare now looks.

And what he didn't do today, but it was implicit, was sort of bang the drum for more support.

He didn't need to say that explicitly, because it was implicit, I think, in the first of the argument he was making.

It was a fascinating, fascinating argument.

Well, yeah, just he's rhetorically made that switch from supplicants to I can help you out.

Yes, exactly that.

And so shifting it round from that, exactly that sense of you need to help us because we are a friend in trouble.

Obviously clearly from his perspective that argument remains live, but flipping it round, as you say, to a sense of not just our front line is your front line,

which has been part of his argument all the way through.

But the nature of the conflict that Ukraine is currently both a victim of and a prosecutor of is the nature of conflict in the years and the decades ahead.

And he talked at the beginning of the speech about how there are Ukrainians now in the Middle East showing their expertise in the war with Iran.

But then also the prospects of, you know, you upon the front line of conflicts to come.

And we're recording this episode of newscast at five to seven in the evening on Tuesday, the 17th of March.

And just just before we started recording, Chris, Donald Trump was live in the Oval Office with the Irish T-Shook, Michal Martin to Marx and Patrick's Day.

And another pop at Kier Starmer, although they're getting quite repetitive now and quite similar.

So I was just catching up with this as I walked back over the road from Parliament, having been in the room with President Zelensky.

And interestingly, another strand of President Trump's critique was a critique of NATO.

And that critique was happening whilst the Prime Minister, President Zelensky and the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, were all in the same room that I was also in, Committee Room 14 in Parliament.

But yeah, as far as President Trump is concerned, he is, I said this in a piece I wrote for the BBC app this morning, and it remains true.

Pretty much every time the President, President Trump, that is, is in front of a camera at the moment.

He has a pop at Kier Starmer.

Now the critique is becoming familiar and the language is becoming familiar.

And some of the arguments are becoming familiar.

His critique around the UK's outlook on energy or immigration, for instance, is his critique of Kier Starmer as a leader.

I mean, I think what's interesting is the stickiness of it.

Does this stickiness of it mean that it is less likely that it blows over?

Or given, for instance, the sort of volcanic nature of that meeting that we all recall between President Trump and President Zelensky just over a year ago,

how they have since had much more kind of conventional diplomatic meetings, at least the bits we see in front of the camera.

Maybe it still can blow over.

But it's so interesting that Michal Martin, the two-shot, was attempting to smooth things over, attempting to talk Kier Starmer up or defend him, and it didn't seem to work.

Kier Starmer has done a lot to reset the average British relationship. I just want to put that on the record.

But I do believe that it is a very earnest, sewn person who I think you have a capacity to get on with and you've got on with him before.

And you've got on with other European leaders of the West.

And I think you have that capacity again.

And I think everyone exists.

I mean, you cannot have a role to stay with a nuclear weapon.

And somebody who's not necessarily coming to the Prime Minister's aid, but is becoming a little bit more anti-Trump, is Kemi-Badenock?

Yeah, I think this is perhaps the most striking domestic contribution, if you like, politically today, as we record.

I'm now trying to pull up because I was doing something else at the point where Kemi-Badenock said what she said.

I am now, for the second newscaster in a row, because on the edition we recorded on Monday, I was also flicking through my inbox trying to find something whilst talking.

Yeah, I am Kier Starmer's biggest critic, she says. There's a lot of stuff I believe he has done that is wrong.

But the words coming from the White House are completely wrong. I actually think it's quite childish.

There's a lot that can be said behind closed doors. The Western Lions having an argument with itself, I think, sends the wrong signal to our opponents in Iran and Russia.

The words coming from the White House were childish. And that's fascinating, because this is what you can do as an opposition leader, as much harder when you're a Prime Minister.

She is able to be more critical, isn't she, than in public, than the Prime Minister feels, at least up to now, that he is able to be.

And I think probably she recognises that while she has made a different argument around the Iran War, and the role the UK should have played, the Conservatives arguing that the access to the air strip should have been granted from the outset, not a couple of days in.

But articulating a view I suspect she thinks is fairly close to the median position amongst the British electorates when they see these exchanges almost irrespective of their political views of President Trump and Kier Starmer.

And then we got, in terms of the substance of what's happening in the Middle East now, Donald Trump seems to have stepped back from his demand that NATO allies in China supply ships and resources to keep the street of Hormuz open.

Yes, I think broadly as a result of the fact that so few have said no, we're expressing any enthusiasm for the idea.

So I think what's intriguing now, what are we two in a bit weeks into the war, is we're beyond the point, aren't we? For everyone, by the way, but obviously particularly for America and Israel, we're beyond the point where the initial kind of rhetorical flourishes and grand statements

and ... survive contact with reality anymore, because clearly the conflict rolls on.

There's still all of those questions about what the endgame is, what the precise desires of America and Israel and by the way they might not be the same are.

are. And then the extent to which, and can we burden up, we're speaking to an element of this,

what we classically associate with the phrase the Western Alliance hangs together or doesn't,

and clearly it isn't in many, in many senses, European countries to a greater or lesser extent,

very or rather skeptical, and as are others too. And then you sit that alongside

how this is going down in America and then a more narrow definition of that within the

make America great again, mega movements of the Republican Party, many of whom are very

skeptical about the idea of foreign military adventures. So where this goes from now in terms of

how Donald Trump makes an argument both domestically and internationally when he is not seeing those

who might normally rally to America's support doing that is going to be really interesting. And

you know, what bearing does that have on the how long the this this this the war goes on?

And then little sidebar story. So a couple of days ago in the Spectator magazine, their political

editor Tim Shipman had a quite detailed leak from the National Security Council of the UK about

which ministers were on which side of the argument about allowing the US to use British

military bases to launch the attacks on Iran. And that's now the subject of a leak inquiry,

because the National Security Council is the one thing that should never leak.

Yes, I thought Tim Shipman is a master journalist and it was a fascinating read. The thing I took

away from it when I read it, the content was fascinating, but the thing I took away from it was

blind me, people are talking within, you know, or who are involved in that particular forum.

Leake inquiries at Westminster do not have a wildly positive track record from the perspective

of those conducting the inquiries in terms of getting to a leaker apart from trivia fans.

A leak from the National Security Council under Theresa May, which was traced to Gavin Williamson

who then got fired. Yes, that is true. One of the few leak inquiries that went anywhere.

Yes, so the precedent does relate to that particular forum.

Interesting, but the vast majority don't, because most people tend to cover their

tracks and make sure there isn't some sort of paper trail or digital trailers, it's more likely

to be now. Given how digital our lives are, does it make it harder or easier to cover your tracks?

Interesting. To be definitively prove it, I think, unless people have been very slapped dash,

would I suspect be quite difficult? In these leak inquiries, people do have to hand over

their phones. The cabinet secretary Antonio Romeo said in a letter that she was responding to

from a Tory front bench, who raised this, that she's taking it very seriously and will use all

the tools at her disposal. Presumably, if she decides asking cabinet ministers to hand in their

phones as one of the tools at her disposal, she'll do that. Yeah, that's true.

Whether that definitively proves anything, let's see. But yeah, as you say, there's a precedent

there, so you never know. Right, Chris, thank you very much. Thank you for your warm welcome back,

and thank you for the reminder that the maize lecture is spelled M-A-I-S, not M-A-I-Z-E or M-A-Z-E.

I'm happy to be here for spelling inquiries. B-Y-E. T-A.

Right, the reason we're talking about the maize lecture is it's a big part of the financial calendar

where a senior figure talks about fiscal or monetary or economic policy. And today,

it was Richard Reeves, the chancellor, doing that in the city of London. And earlier on, today on

Tuesday, I spoke to Faisley's lab because he was there at the speech having gone on a visit with

the chancellor beforehand. And not massively exciting, like, title, the maize lecture, but it turns out

what Richard Reeves had to say to the great and the good in the city was very intriguing as Faisley

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Before we talk about the Mays Lecture, which is an important part of the financial calendar

every year, even if lots of newscasts might not tune in for it, why is there a picture of you

on the BBC News website? You're basically wearing dark glasses. Oh dear, I thought they looked

quite cool. They were yellow. The yellow glasses, laser safety glasses, because I went to go and

see, we've talked about this before, quantum computers, but the Brit style quantum computers

at the Oxfordshire National Quantum Computing Centre. I had focused, when we've spoken before,

about Google's effort here, which is a massive fridge. They're called us placed on Earth.

Yes, because that's what you need for this. No universe. No universe, actually. In fact,

the chance I got excited about being in the coldest place in Europe. So, however, there are

different methods to make quantum work, and the thing that I was looking at there was something

called trapped atoms, where you use lasers to trap single atoms, and then, and forgive me for

this explanation, I don't know the missing links here, you somehow get the qubits that form the quantum

computer. And the reason you were looking at British flavored quantum is because one of the three

things Rachel Reeves was talking about in her lecture today was embracing artificial intelligence,

and the next generation of computing, which is quantum. But before we talk about her numbered

list, and she did a lot of numbered lists in this speech, what is the maze lecture? Why is it such

a big deal for people in your world? You might know better, because you were looking at the list

about how long it goes back, but I think we're talking 20, 30 years, because I think we go back

in 1978. Oh, sorry, okay, longer than that. So, almost as much as my entire life. So, you go back

to Lawson, famous lectures about, if you like, medium and long-term economic strategy shifts

have been made at this lecture, which is associated with City University now, the Bayes Business

School. And, you know, so big decisions that last for years have been signalled at these sorts

of lectures with a long list of former Chancellor's, Shadow Chancellors and the like. And so,

we're very used to kind of looking at the ups and downs of the individual GDP number, or the

employment number, or how they're going to respond at an individual budget. But, you know, what is the

strategy? So, under thatcherism, a smaller state, monitorism, which is when you focus on the money

supply, independent central banks, all the things that have we've taken for granted in terms of

macroeconomics, which when it's working, you shouldn't notice it. It's like the ballboys and girls

at Wimbledon, but it's not working. We all notice it. And these are the sorts of big intellectual

shifts. So, there is an intellectual framework for our medium to long-term economic plans.

And Rachel Reeves is the first person to give this lecture twice.

Yes, and I think I'll let you all into a little secret, which is she's rather proud of that fact,

which I think goes, and the reason why I tell you that, it's not just to be in discrete,

it just goes a little bit way to explaining a slightly sort of inscrutable person, which is,

you know, genuinely very excited about the nervous quality of being able to deliver a speech like this

about, you know, using mediums. Yeah, because no one shouts at her or ask her hard questions during it.

Well, there were some hard questions I would argue, but in terms of the impacts, so yeah,

you're right, it's not the short-term what's in the headlines right now. In fact, that's kind of

the opposite, what gets covered. But it's like, you know, how do you grow our cities, what's our

relationship will go on to this with Europe, what's going wrong in our relationship between the

universities, where we do amazing research, and building the biggest businesses in the world.

So, it's things that affect us big time, that sometimes we don't have the oxygen to discuss,

we discuss it quite a lot, I see, divide. We basically do it weekly, it's like, you do it

52 times a year. But having said all that, though, there was a bit of kind of breaking daily news

in it today, and that she acknowledged that the conflict between the US is real and Iran,

and the streets of Formos being blockaded is going to lead to inflation increasing.

She did, she did, but she again made this comment that we've heard from the Prime Minister,

but I heard first from the Chancellor, which is really the only way out of this,

is de-escalation. And you may think, quite reasonably, that's just words, what does that even

mean? I just wonder if some of the news we're hearing today about, you know, from the Germans,

for example, saying, you know, we won't engage with, you know, a maritime help on the streets of

Formos until the Americans and Israelis have sorted out essentially, I think, stopped what they're

doing. You've heard about the idea that, you know, Starmer has a plan that would help with

unblocking the streets of Formos, but presumably only as the result of the war having stopped.

So they're keeping channels open with the Iranians. So you can start to see, and then if you take

everything back and you sort of unwind the logic of this, which is how long is this inflationary

bump going to last, and the answer is as long as the war. But if you assume that Donald Trump

does not want this to go on in terms of the gasoline prices, that's always look at everything,

but, you know, maybe there's a certain truth to it, to the midterms in November, because this

would be disastrous, supposedly for him, then this ends in August, and the methodology is that

President, you know, before that is that President Trump withdraws and tells his ways to do so,

and then it's over to the Europeans to persuade the Iranians not to block out the streets of Formos.

Now, it's very tentative, but that's the logic strain that I think she was pointing to.

Yeah, and so then she dived into the substance of this big lecture, and as you said, there was sort

of three chapters to it. One of the chapters was about artificial intelligence. What's she,

what's she planning there? So a big injection of public cash over a decade, two and a half

billion pounds, primarily on quantum that we talked about a minute ago, essentially to make sure,

oh, she wants to write what she sees as a pattern of great British invention, and you go back years

on this, which since the 60s, 70s, we have failed to commercialize. We failed to create the world's

biggest companies. We've, we've had a very financialized economy where we're obsessed with the city,

we're obsessed with house prices and stuff like that, but not like real, substantive,

world-changing technology shopping or more than you unicorn won't Kelly. You're talking like a

Microsoft or a Google or something like that, where there's a company called Arm Holdings,

which makes chips, which does very well, which is probably was our best bet in terms of that,

but we've, that was sold partly abroad. So yeah, so that's the point, and she feels that if you put

the money into quantum now, even before the technology is solid, let alone, we know that she's

using the government will buy a billion pounds worth of quantum computing when it's invented.

Essentially, in a few years' time, when you might argue it's not entirely certain that she'll

be chance-living, that's very fair to say, because that's the government providing a market,

isn't it, and always becoming like an investor. Yeah, and I know you're going to like this,

which is like, on social media, I know this is this thing, and I was a bit suspicious of it,

because you get massive doom-monger and despondency about Britain on social media,

but then suddenly I noticed the exact opposite, and it was so like, what's going on here?

It's called London Maxing, or Brits Maxing. Have you seen that? We're two X's.

Right, and this is the exact opposite. The idea of like, actually, everyone slags off the UK

or its capital, high crime rates, sort of Elon Musk-style memes about the UK, but actually,

the environment for AI companies built around Google's deep mind and others, and our great universities

is very, very positive right now, and this movement's got a name, London Maxing. It was so

effusive that I thought, this can't be real. Didn't really think about it. People were talking

about London Maxing in the audience of the mace lecture afterwards, and the general positive vibe

given off by the Chancellor, and we've talked about this before, I don't have a way, which is,

the vibe we get from Westminster is incredibly despondent and do-monger-y, and it's not necessarily

the case elsewhere, even as the economy is pretty flat in the first month. So in that area,

so it's worth thinking about- I'm sorry, people are not fully tuned into the online jargon's

ite, guys. This idea of London Maxing is basically people showing off about how great London is,

and you did an example the other day, didn't you? You didn't see a West End show.

Oh, yeah. And you said how buzzing everything- I was surprised.

Did you take it and you sort of imbibe- What show did you go and see?

Are you know- you absolutely know- I don't want to say wicked.

Oh, we're there five and a seven-year-old. I just couldn't believe how packed everything

out was, and this doesn't mean the economy's boom, it doesn't mean everything's perfect,

but like set against the expectation, and so the bottom line is this, what are the proof,

you know, we shouldn't take our proof points from social media algorithms ever, ever.

So basically Richard Reeves was trying to like quantum Max today.

Quantum Maxing, AI Maxing, I want to diffuse, and this is the key thing in terms of

productivity, which drives growth, which is that AI diffuses across the economy,

and so there's all sorts of initiatives being set up to help that institute and the like.

Oh, yeah, there's going to be an AI economics institute. Yeah, modeled on Rishi Sunak's AI

Safety Institute itself. Yes, now that is interesting, because I think that's a tacit

technology, and that yes, there is benefits to productivity, there's benefits to growth,

she wants the UK to be at the forefront of that. There's also in the transition, as they call it,

some real issues, and we've talked about them before around jobs, and around, say, first century

graduate jobs, and so there's a balance again. Right, let's transition into the second pillar of

our May's lecture, which was about rebalancing economic growth across the whole of the UK.

To me, at first, that sounded like, here we go, levelling up, version 556, which politician or

chancellor has not been in favour of doing this for yonks. What's different this time around?

So the first thing which is very interesting is that the reference point levelling up to be clear,

didn't have a huge amount of strategic substance to it. It had a bit of money attached to it,

it had some recycled European money that used to be European regional funds.

Lots of efforts were made, and there was lots of rhetoric about it. It never really took off.

But it wasn't that new either, because it was called regeneration before that, you know,

in the 2000s, and we saw big transformations in my hometown, and just plays like Liverpool leads,

other countries. The Northern powerhouse. Even Barnsley, they were going to make into a Tuscan villa,

and actually they sort of did. So you have these changes in Europe, they were going to turn

into a Tuscan village. Yeah, Tuscan village based on hill town regeneration in Renaissance Italy,

and this became a big joke in politics in 2000, in 2003, I think it was. It was will also,

very favourable. Oh yeah. And I tell you what, I went to Barnsley, I was on the way to

Elend Road to see my team play against leads, and I popped in, and it was really, really beautiful,

and stunning, and as a guy from Manchester, I was surprised by that. So I guess that's a long

way round of saying that we have had a history of regeneration of cities. It's cross-party,

Michael Hesselstein, people like Lord of Donis, people like Manchester. Yeah, there's been a

consensus here of a certain type of politician. Leveling up was a sort of version of that they didn't

have, and then this is quite interesting, and I didn't expect this because the chancellor announced

yesterday some more funding, yesterday some more powers for Oxford, and the like we've heard

some of that before. But a new power for devolution that powers would go to relevant mayors

over the allocation of income tax spending, not the rates, but your revenue. What's that about?

This is about, I would say, incentivising cities to grow, to increase their population,

so they get a tax base, right? And then you keep that, some of that tax base. So you keep the

proceeds, so Tracey Braban and West Yorkshire will get to keep a certain percentage of how much

income tax is generated by the people of West Yorkshire. Exactly, and you could spend that on her

particular projects that she wants to spend. There's going to be a report come back at the budget

in the autumn. I think the classic example would be Manchester, where you get a population in the

city centre, which was like 51980, and it's now 100,000, and I'm told to get to a quarter of a

million, and that greater Manchester would benefit from the income tax generated from tens of

thousands of increase in population. Now this is quite fascinating because when we talk about

population growth, I can Westminster politics, more or less, it's like, oh, population is growing too

fast. It's an immigration story, it's a small boat story. This is a rather different lens.

It's quite normal, like in America, that is a famous example. Well, it's a very, it's a very

sort of funky way of doing house building targets, isn't it? You just incentivise growth,

like from the top, you incentivise smart local leaders. I don't know if you remember the wire,

the mayor in the wire. I can't do the accent. It's a brilliant accent. It's a brilliant guy. I've

got to grow my tax base. I've got to increase my population. That is what this is, and it's to create

localised incentives for transformation. I think that's pretty radical. It depends on where it

goes. I'll believe it when I see it. Well, and then someone pointed out very astutely,

well, hang on. What if there's a bunch of green or reform mares? Are they going to be so keen to be

demarcating various amounts of the tax revenue for your position? It answered they should be,

because that would be the democratic will of the locals. And also we should remember,

in Scotland, under devolution, there are different income tax rates for the Scottish government.

So there's an example in the UK where there's been quite radical, maybe not radicals putting

too strongly, but quite dramatic fiscal devolution. It does already exist. But I think this is

about growing your, this is a big incentive for big cities to grow their populations with people

that pay tax. Then the third pillar of this speech was about alignment with the EU. What's Rachel

Reeves's pitch here? Now, we've heard some of this before, and it's like, she's been preparing

people for this for a few weeks, isn't she? She had, I would say a few months. This is a very

slow tanker turning round. We've talked a lot about old tankers the past few weeks. This is a very

slow turning round of the tankers, but I think we're getting somewhere directionally in terms of

how the economics and politics intertwine here. She's talked about, and the Prime Minister talked about

alignment with the single market. This was a great answer to the customs union push from

the Greens that it dems from some people in their own party. It was actually no, not the customs

union, have a look at single market alignment in certain sectors. They're having the same rules

as the EU's on re-aligning. That we did with the EU, and that means you would get certainly for

regulatory purposes frictionless trade. There'd still be some customs checks and things like that,

but you sort of frictionless trade. They're doing this already on food, farm and energy. This is

being negotiated right now as part of the existing reset. The question for me was, how ambitious are

in terms of the other sectors? What she said today was, by default, we would align,

but there would be some exceptions where there'd be regulatory divergence, where it benefits.

The test would be some sort of cost-benefit analysis of what business wants, of what would create

jobs and the like. I think she has moved things along. She's created, I think, a situation where,

for example, potentially the chemicals industry, advanced manufacturing, aviation and others

would make a case that would be heard, and they have the powers to do this with their majority

for realignment, we should say, with the European Union, in order to get those sectors into

the single market. Now, the European Union would have to agree. She made a big plea to the Europeans

in the context of this, so be more flexible. Let's not, let's not, the cake argument.

Well, give us some cake, because I was going to say, what does this mean for negotiations with

Brussels? Does this mean adding in extra chapters to the already existing negotiations I just

mentioned, or is this a much more subtle thing of, we independently in the UK will arrange ourselves

so that we're like this, so that we get the benefits that way. Yeah. So I think the existing

negotiation goes on, but then creates a sort of scaffolding for, including, remember that

controversial debate that was had in the Brexit years about European court of justice,

jurisdiction and all this sort of stuff. You create precedence, and then I think go out to the

sectors and to business and say, do you want this? I don't think they're going to front-run businesses,

but if businesses want it, it's there. Because they're just saying, not that I hang out in

Brussels anymore, but I can imagine people in Brussels saying, oh, it's like Brexit again,

just tell us what you want. Yeah. Actually, Richard Reeves hasn't really told Brussels,

hasn't given them a list of West today. She was trying to create an atmosphere within which

better, more constructive conversations. Some people will argue, the old Barney A argument about

having cake and all that sort of stuff. Well, I think essentially, yes, they think cake should

be on offer when they can in this new world. So what else has changed? We've been talking about

Donald Trump, we've been talking about around, we're talking about Greenland. They're also fearful

that some of the responses to that Trump world in Europe would be made in the EU rather than

made in Europe. There's a moves being made there that she was adamant that they should avoid.

But in general terms, a more flexible, positive, you know, the Brexit negotiation was separating

out and in theory, in terms of trade relations, create more barriers. This is a totally different

vibe because it's to kind of bring those back down again. And so this would basically take us

to like Theresa May's checker's plan. I think that that was sort of ways I membership of the

single mark or a Swiss style deal. This is the sort of thing that they won't say lots and lots

of different agreements. But they are being quite nervous about it and they're tip-toeing around

it. I think if you layer the politics on top of this, this is where I think it gets really

interesting because we're now, how many years are we out now from potential labor manifesto?

What is the politics saying of the Greens kind of, you know, chomping at the bit to take labor

votes, mainly remaining votes, younger people voting age 16 plus? You know, you can start to see a

pathway where they are arguing as she did today that the economics of alignment is better for trade.

That is disputed. There'll be debates about that. But for the labor politics of this,

and in terms of any leadership contest than the like, could you see a complete mirror image of

what we saw with UKIP and the Conservatives 10 years ago? Could we see that evolve now with the

Greens and the Labour Party? I think it's very, very interesting. And I guess the question it poses

to me, which is just me thinking out the box, is this now on a sort of pathway, a glide path

towards a labor manifesto offer of some sort of referendum on joining the single market?

If five or six sectors are already in, it becomes an incremental step.

Discuss. I don't know. No one's taught me that. I'm just trying to work out how it all sits

together, which is why I think this speech was pretty important, right? And why I think her going

further than I had expected matters. But of course, Richard Reeves cannot defy political or

economic gravity. Very good. Very good. You're a reference to wicket there for anyone who didn't get it.

Well, Isle, thank you. Thank you. And that's all for this episode of newscast. If you want to make

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