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Unlimited slows. The

1:00

New Statesman. Hello,

1:05

I'm Hannah Barnes and you're listening

1:07

to the New Statesman podcast. This

1:09

is You Ask Us, our weekly episode

1:12

where every Friday we do our very

1:14

best to answer as many listener questions

1:16

as we can. Thank you

1:18

very much to everyone who has submitted

1:20

questions for this episode. We

1:23

are heading into party conference

1:25

season and we are planning to record a

1:27

You Ask Us conference special next week. So

1:30

please, here is your chance to ask us

1:32

anything you have ever wanted to know about

1:34

party conferences and of course,

1:36

these upcoming conferences in particular. As

1:38

ever, please send your questions via

1:40

the web link in the episode

1:42

description or you can just leave

1:44

a comment on Spotify or YouTube.

1:47

But to go through today's picks, I am

1:49

joined in the studio by the New Statesman's

1:51

associate political editor, Rachel Cunliffe. Hello.

1:55

And down the line

1:57

from Washington, D.C. by our

1:59

U.S. correspondent. Freddie Heywood.

2:01

Hello. Settling in all right? I

2:04

asked you that yesterday but just for Rachel's benefit. Yeah,

2:06

if I miss you over here. Speak

2:08

for yourself. Okay, on to the first

2:10

question. Rachel, I'm gonna ask you this

2:12

one and this is from Fan and

2:15

they ask, is making tough choices

2:18

in and of itself an ideological

2:20

objective of this version of the

2:22

Labour Party more important than any

2:25

specific policy goal? So,

2:27

I think this is a really interesting question because

2:29

even framing it in that way, so

2:31

something about the way Labour is being

2:33

perceived just a couple of months after

2:36

winning the election. I don't think if

2:38

you're a government that's been in

2:40

power for two months, you want

2:42

people to be questioning

2:44

whether you're more interested in

2:47

looking like you are, quote unquote,

2:49

making tough choices than actually achieving

2:52

concrete policy goals. And

2:54

actually, I think what

2:56

Keir Starmer would like us to be thinking

2:58

about his government is that it's not about

3:01

projecting anything, it's about

3:03

being really pragmatic and it's

3:05

not about ideology, it's not about being

3:07

from the left or the centre-left, it's

3:10

about making things better and making

3:12

things work. That's the projection that

3:14

he would like. But the

3:17

impression that his government has given us is

3:20

basically that that's their default line in response

3:22

to things making tough choices. And obviously, we've

3:25

talked a lot this week about withdrawing

3:27

the Winter Fuel Allowance as a universal

3:29

benefit. We talked a couple of weeks

3:32

ago about Keir Starmer's Downing Street speech

3:34

where he said things can only get

3:36

worse and this atmosphere

3:38

of doom and gloom

3:40

that Labour really seemed

3:42

to be leaning

3:45

into in

3:47

a way that is, I think, detracting from

3:49

some of the things that they've done. So

3:51

even if you take the argument

3:54

that they were handed a terrible inheritance by

3:56

the Conservatives, $20 billion black hole,

3:58

all of that, prisons crisis, NHS

4:01

crisis, public sector pay crisis, all of

4:03

these crises, they're

4:05

trying to do things to fix those. So, you've

4:07

got the Renters Rights Bill that was introduced in

4:10

Parliament this week. You've had the

4:12

pay deals that are theoretically

4:14

meant to mean an end to the

4:16

industrial disputes that have ground the country

4:18

to a halt. The move

4:21

on prisoner of release, which

4:23

is very controversial, but that is sort of intended to

4:25

avert a crisis. They are

4:27

trying to do pragmatic things to make things

4:30

better, but they're not really talking about them

4:32

as we're trying to do them to make

4:34

them better. They're talking about them in the

4:36

context of, we've had to make tough choices.

4:38

I think there's a missed opportunity there. George

4:41

Eden actually touches on this in his

4:43

cover story for The New Statesman this

4:46

week. I know you talked to him

4:48

on the podcast yesterday, but there is

4:50

this idea at the top of Labour

4:52

that the most important thing is projecting

4:54

competence. That competence is what lost the

4:56

Conservatives in the election and that people

4:59

voted for Labour because they trusted that

5:01

Labour could get things done in the

5:03

way that the Conservatives couldn't or weren't.

5:05

So, in that respect, showing that you

5:07

understand that people can't have everything and

5:09

therefore we do need to make serious

5:12

trade-offs, that is part of the messaging.

5:14

It's part of showing that they understand

5:16

the gravity of the situation. But

5:19

it leads to a situation, as this

5:21

questioner points out, where it almost looks

5:23

like being tough for the sake of

5:25

it is the end goal,

5:27

which is not particularly helpful. I think there's

5:29

a risk there, as George

5:32

outlines, that in trying

5:34

not to look weak, Keir Starmer

5:36

and Richard Ruves in particular end

5:39

up looking nasty. Cool. Which

5:42

isn't very helpful either. Just on Keir

5:44

Starmer, making tough choices is

5:46

an ideological choice in and of itself. I

5:48

don't think we should pretend that there's a

5:51

difference between being a pragmatic politician and being

5:53

a politician that's imbued with

5:55

ideology. Him taking away money

5:57

from pensioners is a policy choice because he could

5:59

have got that money from elsewhere. So he will

6:01

try and frame it as a

6:04

purely practical, pragmatic choice

6:06

that we need to do to stabilize the public

6:08

finances when that's just not the case at all.

6:11

Making tough choices, Freddie,

6:13

is Keir Starmer's message.

6:17

He's setting it as political stall. How

6:19

does that compare to, say, Kamala Harris?

6:21

And her slogans are much more positive

6:24

sounding than making tough choices. You

6:26

know, we're not going back. It's

6:28

looking forward, isn't it? It's positive.

6:32

Yes, it is, and that's because she wants to

6:34

draw the contrast with Donald Trump. What

6:36

she's trying to say is that the

6:38

eight-year or 10-year political arc

6:40

of Donald Trump needs

6:43

to end, and she's trying to

6:45

tap into people's weariness around that.

6:47

It is forward-looking, but it's also

6:49

a much more personality base. It's

6:52

much more about Kamala Harris herself. It's

6:54

much more about her relative use compared

6:56

to Donald Trump. It's much more

6:58

about the way that she speaks, the way that

7:00

she can offer hope, the fact that she said

7:02

that she wants to govern for all Americans. This

7:04

is one of the key themes of her

7:07

convention speech and also her performance in

7:10

the debate on Tuesday. So it's

7:12

less policy-focused, essentially, because

7:14

you don't have this constant calculus of

7:16

what the OBR said and is it going to match up.

7:19

Having said that, we've got to remember that in Congress right

7:21

now, they're debating how they're going to fund the government beyond

7:24

the next five weeks. So it is there, but

7:26

it's just not featuring as much in the presidential

7:29

election as it does in the UK. Okay, Freddie,

7:31

I want to stick with the US. Rachel,

7:33

there's a question here from Colin. Do you

7:36

want to put that one to Freddie? Yes.

7:38

Colin wants to know, how is money used

7:40

by a presidential campaign and why does more

7:42

money matter if both sides have

7:45

large amounts of money? Obviously, the funding

7:47

involved in US political

7:49

races makes UK

7:52

political finance stories seem

7:54

quite pathetic, but

7:56

it's quite controversial over there, but should it

7:58

not be? Well, it

8:00

is a lot more. We had about $4 billion

8:03

spent at the NASA election, which was almost

8:05

double the amount that was spent in the

8:07

2015-2016 cycle. So

8:10

it's huge amounts of money. What do

8:12

they do with that? They mostly buy adverts,

8:14

essentially digital adverts, TV adverts. They also hire

8:17

their staffers as they do what any campaign

8:19

would do with it. It's just the scale

8:21

is much larger. Does it

8:23

matter if both sides have it? That's interesting thing. If

8:25

one side has lots of money and the other side

8:27

doesn't, then it matters hugely. If both sides have the

8:29

same amount of money, then obviously they cancel each other

8:31

out. It just means it's going to be a lot

8:34

more adverts. It's interesting you can

8:37

tell the priorities of the campaign

8:39

from where they spend their

8:41

money on adverts. So, for instance, we're getting

8:43

so much money spent by the Kamala Harris

8:45

campaign in Pennsylvania, in Michigan.

8:48

It was interesting, actually, they took out some

8:50

adverts around Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump's hideout

8:53

in Florida of

8:55

that quite famous provocative speech from Barack

8:57

Obama when he spoke about Trump's crowd

8:59

sizes. And he wasn't really talking about

9:02

crowd sizes. So they used that to

9:04

sort of rile up Donald Trump. So

9:06

again, it's a political weapon that they're

9:09

going to use. The other thing that people get upset

9:11

about is the idea that if you've got individuals

9:13

or individual companies donating large amounts to

9:15

one campaign or the other, that might

9:18

influence what those campaigns do or even

9:20

what those politicians do in office. I

9:22

mean, there's a difference, I would say

9:25

this, but between, what

9:27

is it, you know, Swifties for Kamala raising

9:29

$135,000 from

9:32

sort of small donations and the

9:35

CEOs of big companies making sort

9:37

of those donations. Or is

9:39

that something that people get anxious about that

9:41

really they shouldn't? Is there

9:43

a kind of cash-for-influence side of this?

9:46

I think completely that there is, but that's sort of

9:48

accepted in the UK that it's not, even though it

9:50

does happen in the UK. I mean, if we look

9:52

at the conservative party's donors and

9:54

the access that they've been getting to

9:56

Prime Minister's in the past four years,

9:58

it's been quite significant. Lord Crotus and

10:00

others, they always... end up becoming party

10:02

treasurer. That's controversial. When people read about

10:04

that and Ben Elliott and all the

10:06

scandals around the Conservative Party in the

10:09

past few years, they don't

10:11

like it here. It's just much more accepted

10:13

that that's the case. It's much more normal

10:16

or usual for companies to be political,

10:18

to invest. I was speaking to someone

10:20

from Google the other

10:23

day, and they were talking about it as a

10:25

way of an investment. You just do it

10:27

as part of your investment portfolio. You just

10:29

invest in a party and

10:31

hope you get a return, whatever that might be. And

10:33

do they invest in both, Freddie, though? Do they hedge

10:36

the risk? Yeah, when you play with them off. You've

10:38

got to remember that so much of this is down

10:41

ticket as well. So much of it

10:43

is not the presidential candidate. It's also

10:46

the Senate candidate, the governor candidate, the

10:48

representative candidate, even down to DA level.

10:51

You read Kamala Harris's book when she first

10:53

stood as district attorney, which is

10:55

the lead prosecutor in the city. So

10:57

she talks about the fact that she

11:00

needed to raise thousands and thousands of

11:02

dollars just to stand as the DA.

11:04

So it's completely imbued in American politics

11:06

that this is something normal to a

11:08

much greater extent. You couldn't, for instance,

11:10

imagine a counselor holding

11:13

huge fundraising dinner. They

11:16

obviously hold fundraising dinners for Conservative Party associations,

11:18

what have you, but it's a completely different

11:20

scale. It's not as if the fact that

11:22

they want to become a counselor is completely

11:25

dependent on whether they can raise thousands and

11:27

thousands and thousands of pounds. So yeah, but

11:29

we've got to remember that it goes all

11:31

the way down the ticket. The other way

11:34

that money has massively influenced this particular US

11:36

presidential election was really

11:39

in the choice of Kamala Harris

11:41

running as the Democratic nominee because

11:45

arguably there is an argument that

11:47

other Democrats didn't put their names

11:49

forward, in part because Kamala

11:51

Harris was entitled to all of the money

11:53

already raised for the Biden campaign

11:56

because she was on the ticket. And there's something

11:58

about being named on the... ticket means that you

12:00

can access all the funds that have already been

12:03

donated. Where she not to have been and a

12:05

fresh candidate were to come in, it's

12:07

not as straightforward as that person then has

12:09

access to all the money that's already been

12:11

built up in the treasure chest is my

12:14

understanding. I imagine that would have been a

12:16

factor. I think though in that particular really

12:20

bizarre and unusual situation,

12:23

time was probably the key

12:26

factor like finding a finding a way

12:28

to switch a candidate and run

12:30

that race. Although money comes into that as well,

12:32

like if you've had all your primaries already all

12:34

over a country, you don't want to

12:37

have to try and figure out a way to

12:39

redo them or do them on the quick when

12:41

you're deciding in the middle of the summer.

12:45

After the break, how do

12:47

US and British politics compare?

12:50

If you value our podcast, please consider

12:52

giving us a nice review on Apple

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12:56

the follow button in your podcast app so you

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can get new episodes as soon as they're released.

13:01

We'll be back in a couple of minutes. This

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$10 in order. Welcome

13:54

back. Let's kick off with

13:56

another question at this time from Ian and

13:58

he says it seems that US

14:00

politics compared to our politics is

14:03

a lot more crazy and OTT.

14:06

Is this in part because of there

14:08

being only two parties and why are

14:10

there only two options over there? Can

14:12

someone explain? Freddie? Well,

14:15

if you look at this election, third

14:17

party candidates have been excluded

14:20

decisively and intentionally by the

14:22

other two parties, RFK, who

14:26

originally stood for the Democratic primary

14:28

to challenge Joe Biden. The

14:30

one who said that a worm had eaten part

14:33

of his brain and he dumped a dead bear

14:35

cub in Central Park in New York. He did.

14:37

That very same one. He did. He did. He

14:39

did. So he originally stood in a Democratic

14:41

primary and then he lost

14:43

and he came an independent candidate. So what's

14:45

essentially been happening for the past six months

14:48

before he pulled out a few weeks ago

14:50

is that he's been trying to get on the ballot in

14:53

all of the states. And that's proved much

14:55

trickier than you would have thought. You thought if you

14:57

want to stand, maybe there's a

14:59

minimum requirement, but you can do so. Essentially, the

15:01

Democratic party has been filing

15:03

successive lawsuits to try and prevent him

15:05

from doing so. Their argument often has

15:08

been that he's a spoiler. That means

15:10

that the purpose of his candidacy is

15:12

to prevent the Democrats from winning and

15:14

to ensure that Donald Trump would win.

15:17

But I mean, they can make that argument and they can hold

15:19

him up in the courts, which just goes to show how hard

15:22

it is for the third candidates. And

15:24

you saw the same in the in

15:26

the noughties with someone like Ralph Nader,

15:29

for instance. He constantly stood for the Green

15:31

Party, Brother Party, Jill Starnes and other one.

15:33

And they failed to break. It comes down

15:35

to our last question, really, doesn't it, from

15:38

Colin? It's about money as well.

15:40

It's so expensive to run a presidential

15:43

campaign across the entire United States,

15:46

isn't it? Yeah, it is about

15:48

money. I also think it's about the networks as well.

15:50

They're not going to get as much media

15:52

coverage. But it's interesting. Why is it that,

15:54

for instance, you cannot third parties in the

15:56

UK, even if they don't have a really

15:59

realistic chance of becoming the government,

16:01

I think it's largely to do

16:03

down to the parliamentary

16:05

system. If you have, for instance,

16:07

traditional constituencies, like whether it's at

16:10

the Highlands or the Southwest, for

16:13

the Lib Dems, they're going to be able to

16:15

have enough votes in a single constituency to get

16:17

an MP. Whereas in the US, you need a

16:20

realistic chance of getting 270 Electoral

16:22

College votes, which is a much

16:24

higher bar for them to cross.

16:26

So essentially, I think there's the

16:28

both parties, they in the UK have

16:31

a vested interest in maintaining the two-party

16:33

system. And as you say, Hannah, it's

16:35

extremely expensive for third

16:38

parties candidates to stand. And also, they can't get on

16:40

the ballot and also they can't get in the debates.

16:42

It's also about levels

16:44

of government, right? So in

16:47

the UK, you're much more

16:49

likely to see independent

16:51

candidates or candidates of new

16:54

insurgent parties, whether that's the Greens or

16:58

UKIP in the 2010s, start

17:01

to do well by doing well at council

17:03

level. And then if they're doing really well

17:05

at council level, they take on a council

17:07

and then maybe as the Greens have done,

17:09

they target some MP seats

17:11

and then they've got two or three

17:13

or four MPs based on those seats

17:15

at the Lib Dems and you build

17:17

up from there, but you start at

17:19

grassroots level and move up.

17:22

And I'm sure that there

17:24

are independent candidates in

17:26

US elections at a

17:28

much lower down grassroots

17:31

level. I mean, every state does it differently and

17:33

I think every individual cities and towns do it

17:35

differently as well. But I think in those local

17:38

races, whether you're running for the local school board,

17:40

you probably do get independent

17:42

candidates, but it doesn't build

17:45

up geographically in the

17:47

same way that it does in the UK, partly,

17:51

as Freddie said, because it's not a parliamentary

17:53

system. And I imagine it would be really

17:55

difficult to sort of work your way from

17:57

a local independent school board all the way

17:59

through to state. Senate and

18:02

presidential run. Yeah, I

18:04

mean, you do have independent senators, for instance,

18:07

you know, Joe mentioned where the Democratic senator,

18:09

he has become an independent senator, Bernie

18:11

Sanders, for much of his career has been

18:13

an independent senator as well. It's just that

18:16

they don't necessarily form third parties

18:19

where they have that infrastructure, as you say,

18:21

Rachel, at the grassroots level when they can

18:23

galvanize a whole national campaign and turn it

18:26

into a presidential campaign. I think that's the

18:28

key difference. Now, I think one of the

18:30

other differences is that

18:32

both the main parties in the

18:34

US, the Democrats and the Republicans

18:36

and their previous incarnations, they are

18:38

very, very, very broad churches, like

18:40

much more so than our political

18:42

parties. I mean, obviously you will

18:45

have differences of

18:47

opinion in our main parties, but

18:49

not to the extent there's not

18:51

really that kind of the

18:54

same sense of cohesion as you get

18:56

here. But they're much looser coalitions, aren't

18:58

they? Yeah, it's completely right. I mean,

19:01

you had the segregationists in the 60s

19:03

in the Democratic Party, the

19:05

slaveholders were the Democrats. So you have your

19:07

right, you have this very broad coalition, you've

19:10

got the Republican tradition, which includes the sort

19:12

of the small Jeffersonian tradition, you've got the

19:14

Andrew Jackson tradition in the Democrats, all of

19:16

which have sort of come together in a

19:19

slightly more clearly delineated consensus, I think nowadays

19:21

than in the 20th century and the 19th

19:23

century. But you're right, I mean, the history

19:26

isn't as clear. It's not like you have

19:29

a single party set up by the trade

19:31

unions and another one, which has been associated

19:33

with the church and the monarchy, both

19:35

of which over 100 years, you don't

19:38

have that at all. No, and also

19:40

you haven't got those holding positions in

19:42

the party having to be particularly obedient,

19:44

not the right word, but you don't have to be

19:47

particularly loyal either. You know,

19:49

if you're a Republican senator or representative, you

19:52

don't have to be particularly

19:54

loyal to a Republican president. And

19:57

in the US, they have a whip system,

19:59

but it's nowhere near near as strict as

20:01

it is here in the UK. You can

20:03

have your own personal differences without it really

20:05

causing you any difficulty as a politician in

20:08

a way that's not quite the same here. I mean,

20:11

I want to ask a sort of a sub-question to

20:13

Ian's, Rachel, is kind of what the role, I

20:15

mean, what's the benefit perhaps of

20:18

the UK system? I mean, what role

20:20

do third parties have here that the

20:22

United States, you know, they don't get

20:24

that? Well, if you ask Labour and

20:26

the Conservatives at the moment, not a

20:28

massive fan of third parties, both of

20:31

them facing challenges. And

20:33

the Green Party

20:36

and to some extent the Lib Dems

20:38

on the left and Reform on the

20:41

right are causing major problems for both

20:44

Labour and the Conservatives because

20:46

voters have that other option,

20:48

particularly geographically, depends where you

20:50

are. I think

20:52

we've got a really interesting dynamic in

20:54

Parliament at the moment, and it's a

20:56

real shift from Parliament before the election.

20:58

If you take something like PMQs, which

21:01

happens weekly, the leader of

21:03

the opposition gets six questions to put to the

21:05

Prime Minister and that's kind of the main event.

21:08

After that, the leader

21:10

of the third biggest party gets two

21:12

questions. And up until

21:15

the election, that was the SMP. So,

21:17

what you would get inevitably were six

21:19

questions of Labour hammering the Tories and

21:21

then a further two questions, usually,

21:23

let's be honest, still hammering the Tories, but with

21:26

an edge of Scottish independence. Yeah. It's actually like

21:28

if you think about it being a sort of

21:30

national parliament and how many what percentage of votes

21:32

across the UK the SMP got obviously a very

21:34

small amount because they only stood in Scotland. It's

21:37

kind of weird that every week we had a

21:39

focus on Scotland in PMQs. I mean, that's just

21:41

an interesting quirk of our system. Having

21:44

watched the last two PMQs recently,

21:46

you get six questions now of

21:48

the Tories hammering Labour. And then

21:50

you get two questions from Ed Davie of

21:53

the Libdams. And Freddie, I know when you

21:55

spoke to Ed Davie earlier this year, he

21:57

talked to you about how important it was.

22:00

for the Lib Dems to overtake the SNP and

22:02

become third party and to get that status. But

22:04

it really has changed the dynamic because the Lib

22:06

Dems are walking this slightly

22:08

strange line where they won

22:10

most of their seats by

22:12

challenging conservatives and by being

22:14

the not Tory candidate in

22:16

seats where people weren't going

22:19

to back Labour. So they

22:21

don't want to be too

22:23

cozying up to the conservatives, but they also

22:26

do want to challenge Labour. They don't want

22:28

to be seen as just waving

22:30

through everything that Labour does. It was interesting

22:32

this week when obviously the focus was the

22:34

Winter Fuel Allowance, Ed Davie

22:37

being critical of the move and

22:39

talking about the effect it would

22:41

have on low income pensioners and

22:43

pensioners with disabilities and all of

22:45

that. But he started off his

22:47

question by going, obviously I completely

22:49

understand that this government has to

22:51

make very tough choices because of

22:53

the disastrous situation that the conservatives

22:56

left us in. So it's a

22:58

really interesting dynamic. I'm curious

23:00

as to how long

23:02

that will hold the

23:04

Lib Dems not giving Labour a free pass

23:07

because they're not doing that, but making

23:09

it really clear that if they had to

23:11

pick a side, they'd be on Labour's side

23:13

rather than conservatives because that could change and

23:15

that would again upend the dynamic. And obviously

23:17

the SNP don't get their two

23:19

questions each week. That's really interesting. So the

23:22

role of the third party really

23:24

changes the flavour of parliamentary democracy. Yeah,

23:26

it totally does. PMQs is

23:29

the most visible and dramatic example of

23:31

that, but that's true when it comes to who

23:33

gets to ask questions and speak in debates because

23:35

it's based on how many MPs the different parties

23:37

have. You're going to see it on the select

23:40

committees, the makeup

23:42

of who the

23:44

MPs are and which party

23:46

they're from and the fact that the

23:48

Lib Dems are not that far behind

23:51

the conservatives in terms of numbers completely

23:53

upended the rhythm,

23:56

the dynamics of parliament. Rachel, can I

23:58

ask what you think about how the... Lib

24:00

Dems are going to use their sizable

24:02

parliamentary cohort. Are they putting it

24:04

to good effect? What do

24:06

you think? It's really interesting. It's sort of too early to

24:09

say, but you are

24:11

already seeing on the

24:13

Winter Fuel Alliance the Lib Dems, the Greens,

24:16

left-wing Labour MPs, Tories and Reform all sort

24:18

of ganging up on the Labour government over

24:20

this. We've got the Lib Dems conference in

24:22

Brighton next week, which I will be going

24:25

to, which is my first time

24:27

doing that. I've been told that as volumes

24:29

go, it's one of the most cheerful, happier

24:31

political conferences. So, if you're going, say hi.

24:33

But it's clear from the agenda what are

24:36

the issues that they are particularly going to

24:38

focus on. So, it's kind of what you'd

24:40

expect. They've got a motion on protecting

24:43

the NHS, their plan to save the NHS.

24:45

They've got a motion on cleaning up Britain's

24:47

water. We know that water and sewage in

24:49

the environment was a key issue. Also, there's

24:51

a motion on unpaid

24:53

carers and the care system in general,

24:55

which is something that we talked a

24:57

lot about at Davey, kind of using

24:59

the election campaign to really draw attention

25:01

to that. So, I think there's a

25:04

potential there for the Lib

25:07

Dems to focus on specific

25:09

policy issues that they really

25:11

care about and challenge on

25:13

that. Speaking

25:16

to a Lib Dems MP and sort

25:18

of joking that the job of an

25:21

opposition is to be the government in

25:23

waiting. Can we really expect the Lib

25:25

Dems to be the government

25:27

in waiting? Well, the Conservatives aren't

25:30

a government in waiting at the moment. So,

25:32

maybe it depends how long it takes the

25:34

Conservatives to recover. Are you going to see

25:36

a bit more pushback from the Lib Dems

25:38

or are they really scarred from the last

25:40

time they entered into government when it did

25:42

not go well? So, I think probably a

25:44

focus on issue by issue, but

25:47

it also depends a bit on how

25:50

badly Labour disappoints the

25:52

nation really early on

25:54

as to the

25:56

level of challenge that you might see. Well, that's your

25:59

full note.