288. Is Labour's King's Speech bold enough?

What legislation did Keir Starmer's government put forward in the state opening of Parliament? Do the bills go far enough? Where does Labour go from here? Alastair is joined by Robert Peston and Steph McGovern from The Rest Is Money in a crossover episode to discuss everything that was announced in the King’s Speech. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. TRIP UK TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Assistant Producer: Fiona Douglas Producer: Nicole Maslen, Ross Buchanan Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creef. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

  I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/restispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents. But choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks, now made with no artificial dyes.

• 1:42Alastair Campbell?

  Hello. Welcome to the Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell, and not Rory Stewart, because Rory is travelling, but by Robert Peston and Steph McGovern from the Rest is Money. Robert was at the opening of Parliament yesterday for the King's Speech, which introduced a huge range of legislation. Gave us a pretty good idea of how Labour is going to try and turn the manifesto into a government programme. So we'll be talking about new bills, what they mean, what they don't mean, maybe also what was missing, things we were expecting which didn't appear. We thought it might be something you'd like to hear about. So me, Robert, Steph, here we go.

• 2:18Speaker 03

  Alistair, before we get into the detail of this King's Speech, you've actually obviously written quite a few speeches for monarchs over the years. Does the monarch read it beforehand and ask for any changes?

• 2:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, you do get a situation where you won't necessarily know that it's the monarch who's suggested the change, but you sometimes get them coming back and say they think that a phrasing strays too far into the political arena. They don't like repeating campaign slogans, for example. So, mission-led government probably was borderline, I'd have thought. But yeah, you get them sometimes coming back. I remember feeling a real frisson of delight in 1997 when the Queen talked about delivering a health service for the many, not the few. But there were other phrases that got chopped out as being felt to be a little bit too political.

• 3:14Alastair Campbell?

  And also, they also take an interest in how the stuff that is about them is expressed. So, for example, I can remember one year, I can't remember what the countries were, but they wanted us to reorder the ordering of the countries that the Queen was going to visit. So, they do come back with changes, yeah. It's a very polite negotiation that goes on. But it's really interesting to see how a manifesto and a campaign gets turned into a legislative programme. So, you've had a campaign where Labour has been very much focused on economic growth as their number one mission. And in 40 bills, which is a lot of bills that were in the King's Speech yesterday,

• 3:54Alastair Campbell?

  by my reckoning, I reckon about 15 you could directly say are about economic growth. The obvious ones, budget responsibility, National Wealth Fund, planning and infrastructure, employment rights, but also the railways bill, arbitration bill, digital information. And so, I think what they're doing is trying to take the campaign, take the manifesto and then translate it into a legislative programme. We have lots of, you know, you've got competing themes, you've got things that you've inherited from the previous government, the cigarette stuff that Sunak wanted to do, which Keir Starmer's taken on, you've got the energy, the green energy programme, you've got the border controls, you've got some of the education and the skills stuff.

• 4:36Alastair Campbell?

  So, there's a lot of, you're trying to create a theme out of competing themes. But I think anybody who was watching it would realise that the government... The one thing it wants to be known for in this early stage of government is about trying to get the economy going again.

• 4:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  Although you say that it's about trying to get the economy growing again, and yes, it was quite clear, and actually been clear for weeks, that what they're obsessed with is growth. You can't talk to a Labour minister without growth getting into the conversation pretty early on. But it is striking to me that the first bit of legislation that we're going to see is the, what ministers think of as the shackling Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng bill. She got, she got really cross yesterday. I don't know if you saw that, when in the official notes that they put out about the King's Speech, it actually said this is explicitly

• 5:35Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 5:37Speaker 04

  About stopping a repetition of Liz Truss's mini-budget. She decided that was breaching civil service impartiality. I have to say, I thought it was quite, I don't know if ironic is quite the right word, but it was sort of amusing to me that she decided to complain to Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, about this, because only recently, when I interviewed her, she said that she thought the civil service should be more politicised, and that ministers should appoint permanent secretaries and all, and all the rest. But anyway.

• 6:03Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and don't forget, Robert, one of the first things she did was, as Prime Minister, was to get Kwasi Kwarteng to sack the Permanent Secretary of the Treasury. So I think she's, look, she should just sort of recede quietly into totally relevance. But the fact is that, that that bill is directly about making sure that a future Prime Minister or Chancellor could not do what they did without getting proper advice and recommendation from the Office of Budget Responsibility. So it's quite a conservative measure in its own way.

• 6:36Speaker 04

  And look, on, on the so-called Budget Responsibility Bill, there is some new detail from the Treasury about how it will work. One, they are saying that if a government were to announce tax measures, there would be tax rises or tax cuts, or spending measures that were equal in value to 1% of our national

• 7:05Speaker 04

  Output, top of my head, I'm pretty sure our national output is currently about three trillion, so that would be about 30 billion quid's worth of spending or taxing. The mini-budget announced 48 billion of unfunded tax cuts and as Alistair pointed out, one of the controversial things that Kwasi Kwarting and Liz Truss did was to say they did not want the Office of Budget Responsibility to assess the consequences of this for the public finances. So they are setting the bar considerably lower than the measures that were announced by Kwasi Kwarting and Liz Truss. And they are saying that the Office of Budget Responsibility would have the right to actually, in consultation

• 7:48Speaker 04

  with the Treasury Select Committee, to initiate an investigation even if a Chancellor and Prime Minister didn't want them to. So that is giving, I think, significant new power to the Office for Budget Responsibility. Now, there is one let-out clause, which is, you might call, I suppose, the Rishi Sunak Covid let-out clause, which is they are saying that if measures are temporary and are measures that respond to a national emergency, then you wouldn't necessarily have to use the OBR. But I'd be interested to know whether you think, you know, in the end, we elect politicians to do stuff for our benefit.

• 8:30Speaker 04

  We don't elect the OBR. There will be some who say this makes the OBR too powerful. I just wonder what, you know, both of you thought about that.

• 8:37Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, as you were speaking there, I was wondering what Gordon Brown would have thought of it. And I think he might have thought it was hemming a Chancellor in a little bit too much. As you say, 48 billion was a huge figure. So is 30 billion within the, I mean, not within the sort of three trillion scale, but it's still, you're basically, it is deliberately saying the OBR will have greater significance within the management of our economy. Now, that's a decision that they've made, and I think broadly that is the right decision. But I think some, you know, my own view is that Liz Truss was an aberration. I'm not sure that the country ever will again, I hope, have a prime minister who is so sort of out of control and so disrespectful of the institutions which were already there.

• 9:20Alastair Campbell?

  So I think this is much more about signalling the commitment to stability. I think some of these bills are actually about saying to the markets, you have now got a serious grown up, sensible government that is going to treat, take the economy seriously and sensibly.

• 9:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, because it feels like that, you know, all the businesses I've been talking to since the election, it's like they've all just collectively had a sigh of relief of like, okay, hopefully now it's going to be calm for a bit because, you know, we all know businesses are used to turmoil, all the geopolitical things that happen that, you know, affect business. But it's the stability in terms of policy and things like that, they need more than anything. And the fact that there isn't going to be some person who comes in and suddenly changes things that tanks the market. So surely that is going to give more confidence. And we talk a lot on this podcast about investment in this country. And there's

• 10:17Speaker 03

  been a massive lack of, you know, private and public investment, which is, you know, a big contributor to growth. So you've got to hope that this will mean that will encourage more investment, which will help growth. Because from looking at this King's Speech, and I know there'll be more that comes out in the Autumn Statement and things, it doesn't feel like there's a lot there for growth in the short term. But you do wonder how we're going to get growing if we don't put more investment into things, I guess.

• 10:44Alastair Campbell?

  I think the National Wealth Fund bill is very much about saying government setting the framework and then absolutely it's all then about the sort of partnerships you can get and the sort of investment you can get from the private sector. I also think they really are putting an awful lot on this planning and infrastructure bill. I think that is, that is where I think it'll be, it'll get tough politically, because this is, and this is where a big majority helps, because They are literally going to be moving from a kind of a NIMBY culture to a sort of, sorry, but we said we were going to build and we are going to build and you're going to have to have very, very good reasons why we shouldn't build in the places where the, you know, where the, the planning applications come through. So I think that is a, as a sign

• 11:29Alastair Campbell?

  of commitment. I actually think this stuff could start to move quite quickly, but a lot, as you say, Steph, will depend on the reaction of the private sector.

• 11:36Speaker 04

  So I'm just interested to know, given that you have seen in the interaction between, you know, politicians, departments and, and institutions like the OBR, if it's now all about Rachel Reeves and her officials persuading the OBR to be more optimistic about growth based on the measures she's announced, how likely is it that they're going to succeed?

• 12:01Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I, I think there, there is a clear direction of travel that they've set out. They've set it out during the campaign. I think the civil service, the government has done a very, very good job in turning a set of manifesto commitments into a government programme. That says there's kind of real cooperation going on. The OBR will not want to be seen as an extension of government in the political sense, but I think that direction of travel is now pretty clear. You're right that there is some, I don't think it's as good a picture as 1997, but there is some kind of economic good news that is, that has started to come through. I think it's entirely possible that come the budget, there will be a slightly better feel to the economy than now. I was interested in what Steph said there. And Steph, you said something, you and I did an event a

• 12:46Alastair Campbell?

  few months ago, and we did the same event a year ago with a group of business people, where I noticed over the course of that 12 months, a very, very different feel from the audience about Rachel Reeves and about the Labour Government. I wonder if that of itself is actually going to have an impact on some of these investment decisions. People sort of feel they're dealing with something they want to deal with now. That has a real power.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  Yes, because I remember really vividly when, and we're talking about the manufacturing conference, Make UK, and I remember Really vividly, when Rachel spoke at it, which was, it must have been, not this year, it was last year. She was quite nervous, the audience could sense those nerves. I know at the previous year, it had been Johnny Reynolds who'd spoken and then he came back this year to speak again. And the difference between how the audience felt about the representative of Labour speaking was totally different. I think to begin with, when Rachel had first spoken that previous year, it was a lot more like, oh, you know, I know she's got the economics background.

• 13:56Speaker 03

  She's worked at the Bank of England. She does seem quite nervous, a bit tentative answering some of the questions. But then a year later, everyone was talking about how, you know, this, this is really good. Look, Johnny Reynolds was getting a completely different reception than he had like the three years earlier. And there was a lot more confidence in who the Chancellor's going to be and what they're going to deliver. I definitely sensed that in the room. The, the thing I wanted to ask you though, Alistair, on the planning reform, because a lot of these bills are related to, you know, the success of them is going to be dependent on the planning reforms happening. And, you know, I totally hear what you're saying. They're gonna, just know, you know, forget about NIMBYism and they're gonna crack on with it.

• 14:36Speaker 03

  But is that gonna work on a local level when they're also talking about devolution and more power to councils and more power to, you know, the, the Metromares and everything? And also the constituent MPs, when they're getting grief from people who are saying they're green area, their car park, whatever it is, you know, because like the Daily Mail did an article, didn't they, the other day, where they said, if you live in any of these areas, expect big building work coming in. And I know obviously they're anti-labour and everything else. But my mates were then all talking about, oh, do you think that's going to be this, Nia and me? Do you think that's going to be this? Do you really think they, on that level, they're going to be able to get past people?

• 15:17Speaker 03

  Are MPs going to be on board, even though their constituents are going to be kicking off at them?

• 15:23Alastair Campbell?

  Well, some constituents will be kicking off because we, I think we have created a bit of a NIMBY culture. But don't underestimate how, if you can make people feel that they're part of what they're calling this sense of national, this mission of national renewal. People will compete. People will want investment to come into their area. If you look at the way that the the the the Houche and up in Tees Valley, now I hate the whole Freeport's thing, but if you think that the big message that he puts out there is we've been able to attract investment. So I think that what this is, what they're trying to do is to flip the debate. Now, there will be, there's no doubt about it, anytime you try and, you know, close a local hospital, close a local school, or build something

• 16:08Alastair Campbell?

  in an area that feels comfortable within itself, you will get protest. But I think what they're doing is hammering the message that when we say we have to build, build, build in order to grow, grow, grow, that is what we've been elected to do, and it's what we're going to do. And so therefore, there will be some very difficult conversations. People are talking about the first big rebellion might be in relation to the, you know, the the two child benefit cap. It might be, but I think there will be local rebellions against some of the planning stuff. But that is what they're going to have to drive through. If they don't, then they're not going to be able to deliver on the growth mission. And every Labour MP who's been elected knows that.

• 16:46Speaker 04

  And just out of interest, Alistair, do you think, for example, we have seen this mooted often, but in practice, it hasn't really happened. But do you think, for example, if there's a massive wind farm development, local people should be offered, you know, discounted energy? Do you think, do you think there should be local bribes of that sort?

• 17:07Alastair Campbell?

  What I find exciting about the whole devolution agenda, and and as you were asking that question, Steph, I was thinking of Manchester, where I know you, you know, the north very, very well. Yeah. I was thinking Manchester, one of them, whenever Rory Stewart and I have been been doing public meetings, and you get this very negative sense of politics, the one thing that when you throw it back to people, we may even have done it at that Make UK conference, people have really bought into the idea of powerful metro mayors. And if you look at Manchester, there has been a lot of building going on in Manchester. And that has been part of this sense of, we've got more power, let's use it to do stuff. And I really, really hope that when They talk about devolving power and pushing stuff out more locally.

• 17:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, it's about saying people locally have a greater say over what's happening in their community. But we shouldn't see that just as a purely defensive thing. It's about saying you want to get to a place where people say, yeah, we want to be part of this green energy thing. We want to be part of getting these onshore wind farms in. And yes, Robert, you may end up saying, okay, we're going to do this. Here's the downside and here's where we're going to try and give you an upside. That may happen, but I actually, I actually really hope that we can really turn this nimbyism thing on its head. That I think is part of the politics of what's behind this King's Speech.

• 18:26Speaker 04

  But again, I mean, obviously we're at an early stage and even though we've got, you know, pages and pages of background notes to the King's Speech. It's pretty general stuff. So, you know, when we talk about devolution, for example, yes, there is a lot of economic evidence that if you give forms of regional or local government more fundraising power and more investment and spending power, you get more rational economic decisions for a community and indeed more rational investment. But right now, the powers that the Metro mayors have are a fraction, for example, of what many of our more successful competitors have given their forms of regional government.

• 19:09Speaker 04

  So it'll be very interesting to see how bold Keir Starmer will ultimately be. Do you think he will be really radical and tough when it comes to transferring those powers?

• 19:23Alastair Campbell?

  Well, we'll see, but I thought it was interesting that you think about his time as Prime Minister. Day one, First Minister of Scotland, First Minister of Wales, First Minister of Northern Ireland. Day two, calling in all the Metro mayors. That to me was a signal of intent that, and they've all complained that they had next to no relationship with the last government. I think that was him saying, I'm serious about this and I'm serious about devolution of power. Sadiq Khan often talks about he as mayor of London has the ability to tap into about seven percent of funding that affects Londoners, whereas Apart in Tokyo can tap into seventy percent. He's involved in seventy percent of funding and how it gets distributed. So that is a will care move in that direction.

• 20:08Alastair Campbell?

  I suspect that is what the Metro mayors are hoping. And if you again, look at the, I agree with you. It's only words at this stage, but these are the words that are going to get turned into new law in the course of the next session of Parliament. I think the fact that they've picked on this extra devolution bill. Uh, signals intent that is the direction of travel. And I happen to think it's the right direction of travel.

• 20:31Speaker 04

  So much more to discuss. Let's go to a break.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents. But choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks made with whole fruit and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks now made with no artificial dyes.

• 21:09Speaker 03

  A lot of what we've heard from Labour has involved state intervention, doesn't it? It's like nationalizing railways. It's giving power to councils to run bus services. It's having this state owned GB energy firm. Do you think people trust the government enough to like run services again? Because it's not going to mean all of these things suddenly get better, is it? You know, all of the infrastructure in particular with for rail needs massive investment to improve capacity more than anything. And then with something like buses, they're not suddenly, not everyone's going to start using them again. Yes, it might mean they, if it's council led, they'll run services in places that aren't profitable,

• 21:53Speaker 03

  which will be great for remote areas and, and you know, important for employment and things like that. But they're, you know, people aren't going to just suddenly start using buses if they're still slower than cars. You know, that the things like there should be priority services. For buses, there's there's still the issue around prices, you know, this two pound price cap that they've had on the bus services runs out in December. Are they then suddenly going to go up in price? So there's lots of, you know, great words said about how we're going to take control again and bring these services back. So they're brilliant and they're affordable. But a lot of it to do is to do, particularly in transport, with a lack of investment.

• 22:33Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely. But Steph, if you just to go back to Manchester, is public transport in Manchester better than it was a decade ago?

• 22:40Speaker 03

  It is, yes.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  Incomparably.

• 22:42Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. Now, that I think part of that has been the fact that you've had the ability of locally elected politicians to have a greater say in how those services are run and they've been able to build support for that. I think your point about whether people trust the state is a is a very good one. And the short, I mean, it's complicated, but the short answer is no. But the reason for that is that we've had the last few years in particular, where people sense of the public services that they're not working. Now, it all depends on the delivery. These these changes, which yes, are partly about investment, and that's going to be slowing coming forward. But it's in a sense, it's, you know, you've got the reform coming first and then the then hopefully the investment as the economy grows.

• 23:26Alastair Campbell?

  That's how they're how they're planning this. But it's really interesting, if you look at the the reaction of the, I don't read the newspapers anymore, but I always look at the kind of media monitoring summaries. And it's very interesting to look at the front pages this morning. You've got The Guardian, the FT, essentially saying, you know, a stack of bills focused on growth and planning reform. The right wing papers, the the Express and the Mail are using the same headline, Red Revolution. Now, I don't think I don't think anybody looks at this and thinks, and they're talking about the big state. I don't think it's the big state. I think it's using more of the levers of the state to try to give local communities the power to improve services at the at the local level.

• 24:09Speaker 04

  But but it is interesting how far the, you know, the political pendulum has swung. I mean, when you were.

• 24:18Speaker 04

  Working in government, it was really striking to me, talking to both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, not only did they not want to reverse any of the Thatcher and John Major privatisations, and you didn't reverse rail privatisation, periodically you looked for sort of symbolic things that you could privatised to prove that you were on the side of the private sector. Now, I don't think anybody currently feels that there's any pressure on Keir Starmer to prove that he's in favour of privatisation. I think the challenge that he's now got, and you know, Stephen and I have talked a bit about this on the podcast, because he's done, I think some people say, quite well in this

• 25:01Speaker 04

  sense so far, the challenge he's got is when we have a significant amount of the train operators in public ownership, is he going to have decent management? Will he be able to recruit decent management to make sure that these services are run better than they ca- I mean, some would say they can't be run worse than they're currently managed, but actually I'm not sure that's true. Things can always be run worse. And it's really important, therefore, if he's going to go down this track of, which he is going down this track of nationalising, that the people in charge have to be up to the job. And then, of course, you'll also come across this thing that is always a nightmare for government, which is, can you pay the private sector rate when you're employing these people?

• 25:44Speaker 04

  And can you give these people bonuses, which is always a nightmare in government? But there's one aspect of this, which I was really struck by looking through the notes. So Stephen and I have been talking about Great British Energy. And when the idea was launched a couple of years ago at a Labour conference, it was quite clear then that it was going to be an operator. It was going to not only invest in clean power, it was going to operate clean power. And then as we got nearer to the general election, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, you know, started saying, no, no, no, it's an investor. It's going to invest in these projects and bring in private sector money, but it won't be running these things. Now-

• 26:25Speaker 04

  As you may or may not have seen in the notes that were published, they are now saying that Great British Energy will develop, own and operate assets. And I've been talking to a couple of really big investors and executives in this area, and this worries them because they are saying, actually, it's not obvious to them that government currently has any kind of expertise to operate, whether it's a wind farm or a variety of wind farms or new nuclear power or whatever it is. And they're saying, unless and until they recruit somebody who they have confidence in, if they want the private sector to invest alongside, well, they're going to struggle. They much preferred the model that they thought was

• 27:08Speaker 04

  coming, which was GB Energy is essentially an investor, but not the company that's running it, as it were. And I have to say, just going back again, I don't want to flatter you and your colleagues in New Labour, but this kind of uncertainty would have been unthinkable on the day and the day after the general election in 1997. All this stuff for these sorts of things was nailed down by Brown and Blair, essentially before you entered government. And this ambiguity, this ambiguity about this, I think, is potentially quite damaging.

• 27:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think what happens when you have a government that we have, I mean, let's just, you say that everything was pinned down. And yet, one of the things that is often said about the New Labour government is that one of the most impressive and important things we did was to take people completely by surprise on day one with independence of the Bank of England.

• 28:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, but you knew what you were doing with it.

• 28:03Alastair Campbell?

  No, we, no, we might have done-

• 28:05Speaker 04

  The work had been done, is what I'm saying.

• 28:07Alastair Campbell?

  No, but the point of the Treasury hadn't done the work because we hadn't even really been talking to the Treasury. So my point is in, if you go and look at the first King's Speech, or take another area that I know Steph's very keen on and shares my sadness that it got sort of, you know, smashed into non-existence. But if you look at something like Surestart, that developed in the debate about how we were going to address child poverty. And I think the energy stuff's really interesting because, let's be frank, there was a, there was a wrestling match went on over the 28 billion thing. They locked themselves into this figure. It was actually Rachel Reeves that launched the figure at the party conference. I think they then realised that particularly in different economic circumstances, that could be a problem. It took a long time for them to take the

• 28:50Alastair Campbell?

  decision. When they took the decision, they pulled the plug on it. And now I think what you're seeing with this, I like you, Robert, I spotted that the wording was different. And I think what's happening is you're now having a different debate inside government as to what the limits and limitations of Great British Energy could be, with probably Ed Miliband on a kind of maximalist space, and Rachel Reeves and the Treasury perhaps a little bit more cautious. That will get worked out as the bill gets written, gets drafted and written, and as it goes through Parliament. And I think what I hope will be part of the governing style of Keir Starmer. We interviewed Lisa Nandie on the rest of his policies leading the other day, and she gave a very interesting insight into Keir's

• 29:34Alastair Campbell?

  leadership. She basically said that his style was to say, right, here's your job, these are the kind of areas that you're responsible for, go off, do it, come back with what you want to do, and then we'll take it from there. And I think what you'll see is, rather than the King's Speech being the place where everything is nailed down, and I take the flattery, but I think it's a bit overdone about New Labour. I think we had lots of vagueness, which because the bills turned into acts which were clear, and most of which I think were deemed to be pretty successful in terms of taking the country forward. But this is part of a process. So I think you should say to your friends in the energy sector, they should get involved in that debate rather than fear it.

• 30:14Speaker 04

  Well, look, I think they do want to get involved, but just to be clear, I think where we may slightly disagree is I think in areas where Gordon Brown, Ed Balls, Tony Blair were worried about spooking investors, I think it was pretty much nailed down. And given that Keir Starmer doesn't want to spook investors, I'm just a little bit surprised. But the point that I did want to pick up with Steph about, the area where many people would say he's done pretty well so far, is he has been quite bold in recruiting private sector talent, whether it's Timpson when it comes To prisons reform, I mean, you know, Patrick Valdez was private sector many years ago, you know, worked for GlaxoSmithKline, but now, you know, is mostly known as a public official.

• 30:58Speaker 04

  And then this bloke Peter Hendy, who I think you know, don't you, in transport, who you really rate, don't you?

• 31:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I do. Yeah. I mean, he was Chair of Network Rail, but he's someone who started from the ground, you know, in transport. As soon as he graduated, he went into a graduate trainee, trainee scheme, which was then London Transport, and has worked his way up through the ranks, has done, you know, small projects, big projects, big infrastructure stuff. And so him being in charge of, you know, working now in the transport sector, it does make you think when this kind of devolution on transport issues happens, he'll be there as a really good consultant in it all. And, you know, that's where I've seen a lot of hope, because I'll be honest with you, Alistair, I thought before the election, I was a bit of the view that I didn't think Labour were massively pro-business. I thought, we've heard a lot about workers' rights,

• 31:44Speaker 03

  which are obviously really, really important before people have a pop at me because they think I sound like Ebenezer Scrooge. But I know they're really important, but I just felt like I wasn't hearing a massive amount about how particularly small businesses are going to be helped with dealing with problems they have around skills and, you know, the people they bring in to run the business and help them do well and work for them. So that was my concern. But my view, my point in all of this is, my view has changed because of those ministerial appointments, like seeing Peter Hendy come in, who I've, you know, I've sat next to him at a lot of dinners because I'm always hosting things like the Bus Awards and the Rail Awards and everything else. So I spend my life with people in the sector. And so him, James Timpson,

• 32:29Speaker 03

  obviously, we know quite well. And, you know, other appointments like that, Jackie Smith going into education, who herself has been a teacher. And again, I've worked with her, I know her really well, and I know how much she cares about the stuff I do around giving parity of esteem to vocational qualifications as well as academic. So, yeah. But the thing I actually wanted to talk about this on this, because we have, you know, we've talked about a lot of the things that we're waiting for detail on. So GB Energy, what's going to happen with rail and buses and Everything like that, what's going to happen and lots of other areas. But I was really pleased to see the free um school breakfast for primary school children because this is something, you know, I'm obsessed about. I work a lot with

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Magic Breakfast, the charity which provides, you know, through various corporate sponsors and things like that, they and donors and everything else, they've managed to, you know, provide loads of kids, hundreds of thousands of children in, you know, deprived areas with something, with food to start their day. And it makes a huge difference. Like they've got loads of research on this. It improves attendance, it improves punctuality, pupil behaviour, all the key things you want. And they, I think they worked out for every one pound invested in school breakfast, it can generate fifty quid for the economy in the longer term. So that to me is a really tangible thing that is going to happen now. My only issue with it is, is it the kind of cheap alternative to

• 33:55Speaker 03

  providing free school meals for everyone?

• 33:58Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think you're talking about a, a, a different scale of operation there. I'm, I'm with you. I, I, I think that is, I think you've got to be careful as well. I mean, for, for this to be the first thing about in the education field, we shouldn't imagine that schools are just full of kind of impoverished kids who

• 34:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:14Alastair Campbell?

  you know, can't afford to eat, you know, there, there's, there's a lot of schools that are full of pretty affluent kids who are going there and and actually I, I was hoping for more on health and education than there was in the King's Speech. I think that's looking like a sort of second King's Speech kind of priority maybe because they're, they're both going to kind of go in and audit what the reality is right now. I think, by the way, your point about Peter Hendy, I was at, um, because I, you know, I do lots of events as well, Steph, you know, let's advertise both of ourselves out there as doing these things. And I was, I was

• 34:43Speaker 03

  Corporate ours, that's us.

• 34:44Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly, yeah. But I was at this event last week, the, in fact, you guys should get them on the rest is money because it was fascinating. It was the Ware, the UK Warehousing Association. And I've not even, I

• 34:57Alastair Campbell?

  Robert, honestly, I was fascinated. Let me give you this stat. I've written about this in the New European. How many square feet of warehousing do you think Amazon have in the UK?

• 35:08Speaker 04

  It's probably the size of the Isle of Wight. I've no idea.

• 35:11Alastair Campbell?

  It's 50 million square feet. And if you think that the average terraced house is under 700 square feet, it's like, you know, that is a massive amount of warehousing. Anyway, they were saying that they were excited by Peter Hendy because they had realised how effective he had been as a transport adviser to various government bodies, and that was so important to the warehousing sector. You've got to be careful with these outside appointments. I mean, Robert will remember in the early days of the Labour Government in 1997, we brought in David Simon as a Treasury Minister, incredibly clever, incredibly successful businessperson. He just couldn't get on with government. He couldn't. Whereas somebody

• 35:52Alastair Campbell?

  like David Sainsbury came in and was a brilliant science minister. So I don't think we should just imagine that you pluck people from the private sector and bring them in. But where you will have an issue, what we can't get to is where you bring people in who are already very independently wealthy, so they don't care about the money, and put them on top of civil servants who are just chugging along on, you know, pretty average civil service salaries. But I think they are going to have to shake up the pay and conditions for some of the people they bring in from outside. And the sort of terms of employment. Do you bring people in for three months? Do you bring people in for six months? Do you say, right, here's a specific job of work, here's a team of civil servants you're going to work alongside, here's the ministry who's going to be in charge, you're going to be directly responsible, answerable to. I think that is a model of delivery that we should

• 36:37Alastair Campbell?

  be looking at much, much more than we have in the past.

• 36:39Speaker 04

  I think we would all agree, potentially, over the medium term, is really positive. Unfortunately, this is not stuff you do overnight. And one of the things that's quite interesting to me, and this was true of Blair's government, and it was true of Thatcher's government, quite a lot of the really big stuff happened in the second term. And so so much of how we judge this is really got to be around. If they're really going to make these changes to generate growth, we're probably not going to see much of that till the second term. So have they done enough to earn the right to a second term?

• 37:12Alastair Campbell?

  In a very volatile political era where delivery is expected to come pretty quickly. So I think they are going to have to show a very clear direction of travel. But I think as a government, I think it's hard to say they haven't started pretty well. And as you said earlier, Robert, you know, there's, there's always an element of luck to this. I thought today there's Joe Biden in America, you know, that with this sort of game changing failed assassination attempt, suddenly announces he's got Covid. There's Keir Starmer, on the other hand, who yesterday delivers a King's Speech, which seems to have gone down pretty well. And today is having a kind of absolute diplomatic bonus of being able to sit down and get to know dozens of European leaders that otherwise would take him months to sort of form any kind of relationship.

• 37:57Speaker 04

  And I've actually got to get there because otherwise I'm going to miss this in bed.

• 38:02Alastair Campbell?

  Well, listen, thanks for having me as a guest. This, we're going to put this out on the Rest is Politics feed as a replacement for our Q and A because Roy and I have been doing a lot of interviews this week and now he's amazingly on another aeroplane. So it's been great to talk to you. I'm glad because I did sort of feel we had to talk about the King's Speech in some forums. So I'm glad to have been able to do it on this. And if you want more from the Rest is Politics, you know where to get it. And if you want more from the Rest is Money, just search for it wherever you listen to the Rest is Politics. Dead easy.

• 38:31Speaker 04

  Bye bye.

• 38:31Alastair Campbell?

  Bye bye. See you soon.

• 38:50Speaker 05

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