11 min listen
Less than 48 hours after Transport Secretary Louise Haigh hailed a new deal with train drivers… the rail union Aslef announced further strike action. So what happened to Labour’s ‘relationship reset’ with the unions? And with recent pay deals, what incentive is there for workers to compromise with the government? Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman join James Heale to discuss. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
Labour backbenchers have spent years dreaming of the day they are in power and get ‘the call’ from the Prime Minister, inviting them to become ministers. But this time, a few were surprised that when the call came they heard the cut-glass accent of Sue Gray on the line. Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised them. Her power over the government is hardly a secret: she helped run the country as a civil servant during the Tory years. Now she does so as a political adviser. Why disguise it? Sunak told the electorate to judge him on how well he fulfilled his five missions. In the end, they did Gray is
14 min listen
Elon Musk has it in for the Labour government, his latest tweet screenshotting a racist comment Labour MP Lauren Edwards made over a decade ago. On this episode, Lucy Dunn talks to Katy Balls and John McTernan about whether Big Tech can be regulated, and how DSIT Secretary Peter Kyle thinks the government should treat tech tycoons. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Cindy Yu.
During the election campaign, Keir Starmer confessed to taking Friday nights off. ‘I’ve been doing this for years – I will not do a work-related thing after six o’clock, pretty well come what may,’ he told a radio host. But one month into his premiership, and the Prime Minister is struggling even to take his pre-planned summer holiday. Claims that Labour’s decisive victory would make the UK a pocket of stability in a polarised world now look hubristic. Starmer leads a country that others such as Australia and Malaysia are warning their citizens not to travel to. Meanwhile he is engulfed in a very public Twitter spat with tech billionaire
17 min listen
Courts have started giving out severe sentences to those involved in the riots today, but there is a continued clamouring for Keir Starmer to do more. The next step seems to be cracking down on discussions online, where social media platforms such as X and Telegram could be inflaming the riots. Could the government give in to this pressure, and what do we, as a society, lose if so? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and non-affiliated peer Claire Fox. Produced by Cindy Yu.
40 min listen
Women with Balls will be back in the Autumn with a new series. Until then, here’s an episode from the archives, with the new Chancellor Rachel Reeves. On the podcast, she talks to Katy about being a teen chess champion, going to a school where her mum worked and what Labour needed to do to turn its losing streak.
While working as a callow speechwriter for the Labour party in the mid-1980s, I suggested to a member of the then shadow cabinet that perhaps we should do something in support of the teachers, who were clamouring for more money. ‘Sod them, they’re all Tories,’ came the response. Well, how times change – and also how little. This supposedly marginal land is in danger of disappearing, and with it the wildlife that abounds These days there are just nine teachers in the country who vote Conservative and they keep their heads down in case a colleague dobs them in for the hate crime of existing. However, the principle of helping
Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt entered Downing Street with one mission: to clean up the public finances after Liz Truss’s mini-Budget debacle. They posed as the fiscally credible option. All bills would need to be covered, even if the tax burden had to rise. If the Tories were to lose power for being disciplined and truthful, then so be it. Reeves would like to pin any rise on the Conservatives: an extension of ‘Tory austerity’ rather than her own Rachel Reeves has sought to demolish their responsible reputation in her first weeks as Chancellor by announcing that she has discovered a £21.9 billion ‘black hole’ in the public finances this
Before migrating to Wiltshire where I will be for August, I had a friendly dinner with a clutch of Conservative aficionados. Inevitably the conversation turned to the leadership contest and, having disposed of the poison pill, Suella Braverman, they asked me which candidate, as a Labour person, I would fear most. This was quite a challenging question. James Cleverly is clearly a nice chap but his fondness for blokeish chat may prove career-shortening. Robert Jenrick’s views seem to depend on who he is talking to. Ditto the vanilla Tom Tugendhat. Mel Stride is inoffensive and otherwise undefinable. I doubt Priti Patel’s appeal will reach beyond a segment of her party.
13 min listen
Rioters in Southport have clashed with police after three young girls were fatally stabbed outside a Taylor Swift themed dance class on Monday. The crowd was heard chanting ‘English til I die’ in the violence, which took place outside a mosque. The police have confirmed a 17 year old was arrested over the attack, and he was born in Wales. Is this quickly becoming a major test for the new Prime Minister? What sort of political tensions are becoming apparent following the incident? What role has social media played in spreading disinformation? Megan McElroy speaks to Katy Balls and Paul Brand, UK Editor of ITV News, who has been reporting
-18 min listen
Rachel Reeves wakes to mixed headlines today after she announced a range of spending cuts to part fill a £22 billion ‘shortfall’ in public spending for this year alone. The most controversial move by Reeves on Monday was her decision to axe the winter fuel benefit for pensioners not eligible for benefits. That saves £1.5 billion but has already been blasted by Martin Lewis and Age UK as a blunt measure that will hurt those on modest pensions who struggle to make ends meet. Is there more hard medicine to come? Katy Balls speaks to Kate Andrews and John McTernan, former political secretary to Tony Blair.
17 min listen
The Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to give a statement to Parliament on Monday outlining the state of public finances, including a ‘£20 billion black hole’. James Heale talks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews about the strategy behind this: will this speech lay the ground work for the Autumn budget? How new are these economic issues? And, with the Conservatives embarking on a long leadership election, will Labour have a free rein for their plans? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
The appointment of Becky Francis CBE to lead the Department for Education’s shake-up of the national curriculum is typical of Labour’s plan to embed their ideology across our institutions – or rather entrench it, since the long march is almost complete. On the face of it, Professor Francis is ‘unburdened by doctrine’, to use Sir Keir Starmer’s phrase about how Labour intends to govern. As former director of the Institute of Education and current CEO of the Education Endowment Foundation, she has the outward appearance of a technocrat. But scratch the surface and, like so many Labour appointees, she emerges as a long-standing adherent of left-wing identity politics. After earning
Chancellor Reeves adamant she will ‘make sure the sums add up’ Rachel Reeves gave an interview with Laura Kuenssberg this morning in which she emphasised the ‘mess’ she says the Conservatives have left behind, and restated that Labour would not spend outside of its fiscal rules. Kuenssberg asked the Chancellor whether she would be prepared to ignore the recommendations of the independent pay review bodies, which have called for a public sector pay rise of 5.5 per cent. Reeves would not confirm the government’s position, but accepted that ‘there is a cost to not settling’ public sector pay disputes, implying she might be open to above-inflation pay increases. What is
As the dust around the election settles, a question Tory MPs and supporters still grapple with is why Rishi Sunak called the election when he did – not least because economic indicators point to improvements over the summer and autumn, as inflation returns to target and growth starts to pick up. But Rachel Reeves, the new Chancellor, is having none of this narrative. ‘I really don’t buy this idea that somehow we’ve been handed a golden inheritance,’ she told Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC this morning, in her first sit-down interview since she entered No. 11. ‘If the former prime minister and chancellor had thought things were so good, they
Age. At the Spectator party last week, the editor asked me how long I had been attending the festivity. I could not remember whether it had been since the late 1970s or not until the early 1980s. But change is not always for the worse. During the 1980s, dearly beloved Bron Waugh was in charge of the wine. Talk about plonk. I do not know whether cats or horses were responsible, but there should have been no question of calling in a vet. The beasts ought to have been sent straight to a laboratory, to hunt down the toxicity. The Blairites had no shame about drinking champagne in public These
Labour MPs ought to have been jubilant when they gathered for their weekly all-party parliamentary meeting on Monday. Most were still riding high after their party won a landslide majority. Yet there was a frisson of unease as some of the new flock took the opportunity to raise a grievance: the two-child benefit cap. ‘It’s the first week and they’re already complaining,’ sighed one MP this week. The unhappiness has been brewing since last summer when Keir Starmer and his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said they were in no rush to lift the ‘nasty’ two-child benefit cap, introduced by Theresa May’s government in 2017. The policy, which restricts welfare payments to
16 min listen
Labour has set out its ambitious missions in the King’s Speech to open a new parliament today. On the podcast, Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and former Labour advisor John McTernan about what was expected – and what was missing – from the legislative agenda. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Cindy Yu.
13 min listen
Keir Starmer is coming under pressure to commit to scrapping the two-child benefit cap, introduced in 2017 by the Conservatives. Plaid Cymru, the Greens, Nigel Farage, the SNP, and now some Labour backbenchers are all calling for its removal. Can Starmer hold the line? Elsewhere: in Wales, First Minister Vaughan Gething has resigned after four months in the job, and in the US, Donald Trump has chosen the junior senator from Ohio J.D. Vance as his nominee for Vice-President. What could these developments mean for Labour? Lucy Dunn speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Oscar Edmondson.
59 min listen
Join Fraser Nelson, Katy Balls and Kate Andrews, along with special guest Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, for a live edition of Coffee House Shots recorded earlier this week. A week on from Sir Jacob losing his seat, he declares ‘I can speak freely now’. So, why does he think the Conservatives lost the election? The team also answer a range of audience questions, including: how will the Conservatives win voters back? Is Nigel Farage here to stay? And what’s their verdict on Labour’s first week? Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Megan McElroy.
