The News Agents: Don't panic! Gillian Keegan says only SOME of our schools are unsafe

This is a global player original podcast.

Is this government failing children minister?

Absolutely not.

That was Gillian Keegan, the education secretary on her way into cabinet

and not an f-bomb in sight. Her department have been trying to reassure this morning.

They have put out an ad on social media saying most schools are unaffected by the concrete crisis.

Which is a bit like a supermarket saying most of our chicken will not give you food poisoning.

Or an airline saying most of our planes will land safely today.

Will not crash. You're kind of thinking about the ones that will rather than the majority that won't.

I'm not sure it's as reassuring as they want it to be. In fact Labour doesn't think it's

reassuring at all and they've been having a field day putting out their own version.

Yes which says it's from the mayor of Amity Island and if you remember that from the film Jaws,

it's called Jaws Update. Most beachgoers not eaten by big shark.

Welcome to the news agents.

The news agents.

It's John.

It's Emily.

And it's Lewis.

And we are at news agents HQ.

And of course the fallout or the fall in from concrete goes on and on and on with ever new

dimensions to the story and question marks even over whether Gillian Keegan can remain as education

secretary. That's according to the Daily Telegraph who thinks she is under severe pressure.

I think the thing that still strikes me as the most extraordinary thing about this is of course

it is about roofs and the Tories proclaimed 10 years ago almost exactly to the day 10 years ago

that they were going to be fixing roofs. George Osborne the Chancellor.

Labour thought they had abolished boom and bust so they failed to fix the roof when the sun was

shining. This time we're going to run a surplus. This time we are going to fix the roof when the

sun shines. We will fix the roof when the sun is shining to protect Britain from future storms.

And of course a very different story has been told in terms of how much fixing of roofs went on

because we know that under Labour there was a plan worth 55 billion pounds starting 2003 to

refurbish every secondary school. But by 2010 when the Conservative government took over the

coalition under David Cameron that then changed. They scrapped the entire building scheme.

They decided that repairs would be protected but 700 school rebuilds would be stopped and Michael

Gove who was education secretary at the time thought it was a kind of pointless bureaucracy

to be doing the building for schools program. He said it wasn't getting there fast enough and

they essentially stopped it under the new government's austerity plan and capital expenditure

on education has fallen by a third since Labour held power. It's gone down from 8 billion in the

last three years of Labour to 5 billion in these years of the Conservative government.

I think this is part of a wider story which it surprised me the extent to which in recent years

it has been a relatively low importance political issue or rather this issue has not

got more attention as to how much in terms of overall government spending education has declined.

So when you've got something like health for example not only being protected year on year but

going up year on year you can have an argument about whether it's enough but you know it's gone up.

Education meanwhile has basically been flat lined for years and years and years. If you

go back to 2005 one in five of every pound the government spent on UK capital expenditure was

in some way on schools. Now it's around one in 20 and I think you can see this story to some extent

as a vindication as to at least one of the strongest arguments that was made against prolonged

austerity and deep austerity at the time. You can have an argument about you know whether

some cuts were always going to happen but there was always a question back in 2010, 11, 12 as to

the extent and the depth and one of the arguments always made was okay you can cut capital expenditure

now it's the easiest thing to do whenever government departments or a government or the

treasury is looking to save money they go for capital budgets straight away because that's

the thing you can stop straight away you can't control or substantially reduce spending on all

of the other things but in terms of new buildings repairs to buildings all that sort of stuff you

can stop it very very quickly. The problem is and the argument always made was okay you're saving

money now but it's going to cost you way more money down the line and that essentially is being

vindicated as an argument not only in this part of public policy and politics but in lots of

others now. Yesterday we had a retired permanent secretary from the department for education say

Rishi Sunak cut the budget halved it on how much was available to spend on school repairs.

Now we've had the national audit office the current head of the national audit office say

the government has have a sticking plaster approach has only spent when it's become an

emergency and therefore wasted hundreds of millions of pounds at the last minute when

if they'd had a proper buildings program this wouldn't have been necessary extraordinary

intervention. Yeah and the extraordinary thing I think is that it doesn't just go back to the

austerity years it goes back to 2020 when the Department of Education itself just three years

ago estimated that five billion pounds would be needed to mitigate serious risks and maintain

buildings that was their own estimate it's not somebody else telling you what you should be

spending it's the Department of Education saying this is what we should be spending and the treasury

after that assessment was made only allocated around three billion forty percent below what

the government knew it should be spending what it was advised so it's not like it's just I mean

it is a decades old problem but it's also an incredibly recent problem of which they've been

aware. Yeah and you add into that as well it's not just capital spending in terms of the overall

budget even for current spending per pupil it's basically been flat as I say over the last 10 years

and during that time as well to throw in a kind of a quality of opportunity argument into all of this

the per pupil spend in say the independent sector has gone up and up and up I think the gap now is

almost three times as high as it was back in 2009 2010 so this is as I say in a way I'm surprised

that this is as an issue has not had more salience in our political debate over the past few years

but my god it is now small boats yes small boats brexit and so on but you know we are talking

when the government likes to talk about productivity and it likes to talk about you know growing the

economy there is no better way of growing your economy than making sure you have a skilled

workforce in the years to come if you neglect capital spending and you neglect current spending

on education then you know what you don't get a workforce that can compete in the modern world.

I think there's also interesting aspects of this about the politics of what is happening

within Whitehall just down the road from where we're recording this and also what's been happening

at number 10 and make this I think you were kind of hearing about some fascinating

conversations with the outgoing director of communication so I've been hearing a couple

of interesting conversations that went on and this is Rishi Sunak trying to work out essentially

who's with him and who's against him who's on board who actually gets what's happening this was

meant to be a big sort of beginning of term reset for Rishi Sunak you know and he was going to come

in and do a big reshuffle and a big reset and plan the speeches for conference and all the rest of it

and I understand that his chief of staff Liam Booth Smith called department spads into his

office and said right I need to know which of you think that Rishi Sunak's going to win the

election who thinks that we can win and of course there was no spad in the room that said no but

privately I was told most of the spads of other departments do not think he has a chance of winning

and last week we saw the departure of Amber de Botton who was his director of comms

and something very little known about their relationship is that actually she went to

see him when he was chancellor and went in for an interview and he came out and said I can't

possibly work with her because she had been from a broadcasting background she had come from ITV

and there was the sense that this would be a great fit when he was chancellor and he said no no I

can't work with her that doesn't work she never got the job when he was chancellor but then when he

was prime minister and they were so desperate for a director of comms she was the best person

available she came in and she wouldn't be the yes woman that Rishi Sunak needed and he preferred to

have people around him who were a bit more prepared to boy him up and agree and all the rest of it

and they just couldn't find what they call landing ground for them to work on she felt undermined

he ignored her advice she quit last week and he's got people now very closely to him one of whom

I'm told is only on a six month contract so is not actually staying for the election you know unless

the election happens you know two months time but they are all thinking in terms of who's actually

loyal right now to a man who might lose and so you basically go into what has now become a fully

fledged crisis that is you know really potentially deeply politically damaging without number 10

having a head of communications and I think that you are basically seeing some of the effects of

that and some of the weakness around the centre from number 10 exerting its power in Whitehall

I mean I've been speaking continuing from what we were talking about yesterday I've been speaking

to people in different departments who are absolutely furious with the department for

education right now someone put it to me you cannot overestimate the extent of the anger

in the cabinet office department for levelling up the department for health all these different

departments and agencies which are being affected by this because of course they have

responsibility towards their own estate and people are asking well what about the courts what about

the hospitals the care homes all that sort of stuff and there is a sense now and I have to say

department for education denied this to me strenuously they'd say it's not the case but there

is a sense in Whitehall that the department for education and Julian Keegan have not been acting

in a collegiate way that they have been freestyling that they have been issuing communications and

making policy that is not consensual I mean I'm looking at the piece of communication in front

of me here from a different department someone sent to me saying as you're aware the department

for education made the announcement without informing us the cabinet office or any of the

other departments with estates that may be impacted by rack now that is a part of an official that

is a bit of correspondence from a senior person in a different department so that is just a little

taste of the irritation in different departments as we were saying yesterday I think that that is

part of the the story of that clip with Keegan because she was basically saying I'm doing something

about it our department is doing something about it where are you none of the other departments are

and we're getting the flat famously sitting on their arses well great so this takes you back

to the end of the major years where the centre is not really functioning and you've got a prime

minister who is ordering cabinet ministers or what to do and they're all going their own way

because they see an election coming which they're going to lose and they're trying to secure their

own position and it ends up with Michael Portillo putting phone lines in so that he can launch his

own leadership bid against John Major, John Redwood out on maneuvers when he was the Welsh

secretary etc etc and it's disintegration of the centre and that is the centre cannot hold

the centre cannot hold and that is a sign of political weakness but in a way Rishi soon

had missed a chance didn't he because if this was meant to be the first week back at school

you do what Kirsten Ahmad did yesterday you do a big reshuffle and you show you mean business

and the person I was speaking to very close to Rishi Sunak said why didn't he just take the bull

by the horns we know that there are people who need to be moved you can't go into an election

with Sorella Braverman you can't go into an election with Therese Coffey in those jobs

they even mentioned Jeremy Hunt which surprised me and I said but you know isn't he the safe pair

of hands the studying ship and all the rest of it and this person said yeah but they've done that

they need to go into the election with a creative chancellor they need to have a brown

an Osborne somebody who actually offers the electorate something they can get excited about

and so he suggested there needs to be a proper bravery in terms of actually shuffling your people

around to give you something that looks like a confident front bench which is what Stammer has

done which is what Stammer has done but who is there that Rishi Sunak can sadly say I know I'm

going to put you in and Jeremy Hunt is pretty much unsacquerable and that's the problem that

Gordon Brown faced in the run up to 2010 when he wanted to move Alice the Darling from Chancellor

of the Exchequer and Alice the Darling said I ain't going and Alice the Darling won that arm

wrestle because I've seen you through a crisis you know I've seen you through a crisis you can't

get rid of me now which I think is what Jeremy Hunt could sort of legitimately say but at some

point there has to be a vision from Sunak right all he's doing at the moment is putting out 100

fires in 100 places not even putting them out probably like throwing petrol on them half the

time but there isn't a vision that you can go oh that sounds exciting no but if instead of worrying

about his chancellor in his cabinet which is a slightly longer term thing as you say Emily he's

got to get number 10 in order and probably if they had a head of communications that the prime

minister was trusting and was fully in control of then you wouldn't have to go back to what you were

saying at the very top of the show you wouldn't have which again I suspect is a bit of freestyling

here the Department for Education and Julian Keegan controlling some of the comms around this

and ending up in the very unfortunate position of tweeting out a picture which says most kids

will survive their ceilings well in a moment we're going to be talking to Craig Oliver who

was at number 10 Downing Street as director of comms during the Cameron years for his take on

how the government is handling or not handling this

Craig Oliver I mean it doesn't seem just to be the concrete that's crumbling it's

government messaging as well what do you make of it well I used to brief MPs and cabinet

ministers a lot of the time and I do a sort of stump speech to them which started with you know

journalists are not your friends and then the second thing was anything you say outside of your

office or your home is fair game and I think Julian Keegan really felt foul of that somebody of her

experience at level should have known that if she said something like that with a microphone on her

and a camera pointing at her there was only one outcome from there and I think it showed a kind

of weird sort of entitlement I think she thought that she could have this sort of chatty thing and

people might sort of agree with how what a tough time she'd had over the weekend and it just played

into the sort of out of touch are you in control narrative that Labour are building up

it had the ring to it of Tony Hayward do you remember after the BP oil spill who said I just

want to get my life back the one thing you're not allowed to do it seems in public office is think

about yourself yeah and look we live in a time where the expectations on any problem is that you

are on it immediately and I think if you're going to play at that level if you're going to be a

cabinet minister and something falls on your desk on a Friday afternoon you have to react quickly you

have to demonstrate grip you're not necessarily going to have all the answers immediately but you

have to go out there and say look I'm on it and I will not rest until I've sorted it especially

as you're entering into election year and you're just coming off holidays and the problem was it

looked a bit complacent it looked like it was a bit of an imposition that she was having to deal

with it and her staff were having to you know get off their backsides and do stuff we were reading

between the lines given what we'd also found out from the Department of Education and looking at

the fractures actually between cabinet members between the government advisors in terms of

who thinks that she went too early on all this stuff that she had gone out there basically

winged it a bit and no one else was ready for that and she was almost in that clip justifying

having been the one that blew the whistle I think that the reality is as soon as you're aware of

these things and there is genuine danger to people you have to be able to react quickly and if any

inquiry or anything afterwards looked like you were being slow while children were coming back

to school I think more to the point is she's trying to point to we live in a quite complicated

environment where 30 years ago contracts were signed local authorities are responsible civil

servants didn't necessarily ring the alarm bell as quickly as they could the problem with that

approach if you're a secretary of state is nobody cares you're not going to ever be given any slack

on that the buck stops with you and you have to demonstrate that you accept and understand that

and I think that that was a real problem for her yesterday it was it looked like dealing with a

serious problem dealing with a crisis felt like an imposition rather than her duty as somebody

who's elected there's been suggestions that other government departments didn't know that she was

going to make that announcement on rack and the school closures and all the rest of it do you think

that's possible it is possible and I think that there is a real issue with the sheer complexity

of government internally in departments are often a lot of times people don't know the left

hand's doing what the right hand's doing that sort of thing I find in this case I suspect that is

quite unlikely it's possible that the end of the summer it's possible that people just went

very quickly without informing others but in reality I don't really buy it the reality is that the

government machine has to be quick enough off the mark to be able to make announcements to be able

to say that information is coming out I was looking at my social media feed in the last couple of hours

and messages that really should have been going out Friday or Saturday morning are starting to

flow out now about how information is going to come out it looked to me that they were actually

more asleep at the wheel rather than actually ahead of everything great can I take you to the as it

were concrete issues at the bottom of all this which is that labor was spending money on a building

for schools program until 2010 when the government changed and that was the government you worked

for it was David Cameron it was Michael Gove a secretary of education who basically slashed

the spending when you look back now and you see the decisions that were taken by Osborne's austerity

plans by Gove saying end of building for schools do you feel quite horrified that that's the legacy

of that time I understand that people want to say that austerity went too far and I get that they

feel very strongly that certain things should have been spent on and others shouldn't and that it

should have all worked out I think that what people are not working out and not dealing with is just

how difficult our economic situation was then and that the feeling was that we needed to get the books

in order and if we didn't get the books in order that it would be worse in the long run you can't

prove that argument but I think that a lot of people who believe in sound money feel comfortable

that actually some difficult decisions had to be made look of course schools need to be invested in

and of course they need to be it needs to be done properly and that we need to be in a situation

where they're not falling down I don't think anybody took that decision expecting that they

were going to have aerated concrete and that this was going to be happening 10 years later

just one other thing on the grip element of this the department for education has put out a big

banner bold poster kind of on social media and elsewhere this morning saying most schools are

unaffected which sort of kind of has you know the Labour Party has put out a response saying

most beachgoers not eaten by big shark it's hardly reassuring yeah I mean look I saw that message

and thought look you really need to sharpen that up I mean I think that what they probably needed

to do was make clear that 90 odd and I think it's the high 90 percent of people that will be unaffected

by this that's not very reassuring for the people who are affected but it gives some sense of the

proportion of the problem it looked a bit slapdash it looks a bit blasé and I think that that is the

problem that they've got overall with this is they didn't react quick enough they looked like they

didn't really have a grip on it they looked pissed off when they were asked any difficult questions

about it and that really cuts through yeah that's so interesting Craig one other thing you started

the interview by talking about how Gillian Keegan could not should not have expected anything different

from ITV other than that for that clip to air I mean your past was as an ITV political producer

and then with us at the BBC how easy or complex a decision do you think it was for ITV to say

actually we're gonna run it I think that one was pretty straightforward she was still facing the

camera and the mic was on she would have had every expectation that it was running and I think that

actually what she did was expect people to feel some kind of sympathy for her and thought that

this kind of gambit would actually go down very well with people in fact it went down like a lead

balloon much more complicated was actually the Gordon Brown one where he called one of his

constituents a bigot or somebody who was trying to persuade to elect him a bigger when he was in

a car driving away and the microphone was still on him I thought that was a much trickier one

but the reality is if you are in politics if you are near a camera if you are near a microphone

you have to expect that whatever you say will get used it may not be fair it may not be right

but it pretty much will get used just talk us through Craig would you have run that if you've

been at the BBC look I think the Gillian Keagle one yesterday was straightforward and I don't think

anybody in any editorial position would have cut her any slack on that on any channel it was just

she said it it was within seconds of the interview going she knew she was on mic she knew she was on

camera I don't think anybody would have had a problem with that it becomes more nuanced and more

difficult when you have somebody who doesn't think they are on mic or on camera and thinks they're

in a private space which is actually what happened to Gordon Brown and the BBC did decide to run that

and I think they got quite a bit of criticism for it but then you're into a real sort of like

tricky one about are you hiding stuff that people say about their constituents and electorate that

kind of thing the bottom line of this is politicians who have to expect you say something like that

with the microphone on it's going to be reported there but for the grace of god we all know what

that feels like up to a point don't we so yeah Craig thanks so much thanks for joining us brilliant

to have you Craig bye thank you and Lewis will be with us in just a moment where we'll be talking

about his home city Birmingham which has run into a spot of financial trouble

this is the news agents

welcome back and last year the Commonwealth Games were held in Birmingham and it was hailed

as the start of a golden decade for the city spool forward one year not looking quite so

golden or if it was golden the gold will have to go to a pawn shop because Birmingham city council

has sort of um gone bust and here with us is Lewis his home city we've broken it is it because you

heard it's a bust nobody's buying spivvy suits in Birmingham city centre anymore right this is I

tell you what I tell you what this is this is getting out of control sorry Emily one other bit

from the wedding which hasn't been discussed before I'd say here we go it's his best man revealing

the elocution lessons oh no might have might have deep Birminghamified someone's accent this I tell

you what this is a spin this is a spin war how dare you this is unbelievable just thought I'd mention

anything else on pass on anything else I think we're going to get a bit of bromie accent back

into this right why don't I wish you're talking about Emily so just talk us through this then

because a council it is Birmingham city council going bust yeah it sounds unreal doesn't it yeah

it does and it's not the first council to do so over the last year or so and I suspect it won't be

the last either so this is but it is the biggest it is the biggest so this is this is important for

two reasons first of all in and of itself this really matters Birmingham city council covers

a million people it is the biggest council in europe has by far the biggest budget billions of pounds

of any local authority in britain so it matters in and of itself but it also matters because of

what it says about the state the parlor state of local government in britain which of course

is the bit of government that most people interact with most of the time so Birmingham

has issued this thing called a section 114 notice that is the equivalent of a council

saying that it's insolvent that it can no longer afford to pay for its bills and it means that it's

notifies the department for local government deluxe and it's not like a company it's not like

going busters such not like it's been liquidated I suppose the closest equivalent is really a company

calling in the receivers where it continues to operate but the management and in this case

obviously the Labour controlled council cannot take any new decisions it does all of the things

that it is obliged to do by law i.e. you know continue to provide education services continue

to provide children services continue to provide old people's homes but it cannot take any decisions

political decisions anymore it cannot has no further discretion over policy until such time

as it comes to an arrangement with the central government as to how it's going to fund itself

going forward so i'm reading that one of the things that really pushed over the edge was this

one billion pound equal pay bill so this is what happened essentially that they've called in the

external auditors they've looked at the accounts for 2020 to 2022 and they do not fully account for

equal pay liability and are therefore not closed so what was that about I mean this is a gender

thing is it yeah so this relates to a supreme court decision back in 2012 which found that the

council had not been paying its female staff in the same way that they've been paying its male staff

over the previous decades so it related to wage settlements and bonuses and this has essentially

given the council a liability of i was talking to one councillor on the council earlier they were

saying it's probably going to end up costing over a billion pounds a billion pounds which is basically

all of its day-to-day spending budget for the year and then you couple that so it basically

was saving money by not paying its women properly basically over a long period of time yeah and

that could affect other councils as well but that isn't the only reason so you throw into the mix

as well yeah there's been some mismanagement there was a an IT program which ended up costing

five times as much as it should Birmingham has a long long history of difficulty i mean it's

i'll say it's the biggest council there've been lots of arguments over the years and maybe it

should be broken up it's too unwieldy its children's services have been shambolic in all sorts of

ways but then you throw into that so you've got all out on the one side and then you've got all

the stuff that is affecting all councils which is rising and rising and rising demand in the form

of an aging population more demand on its children's services more demand on its older people's

services all the things that councils up and down the country are dealing with and over years and

years and years going back to our earlier conversation smaller and smaller real-term budgets

or cuts or meagre meagre increases in recent years so you throw all of that together and you end

up in a situation where the biggest local authority in britain is now bankrupt and also going back

to where we started which is schools i learned something that completely horrified me today

which is that the government is not responsible for the safety of buildings technically it is

devolved to local authority and to academy trusts so you imagine getting whacked with the school's

safety bill now as a local authority i mean birmingham's not going to be the last that's

sort of no indeed so and the government have not been clear just on the building stuff as to

whether this is going to be paid for with new money or with existing capital money but ultimately

as we said yesterday you know the government sets the budget so that has all sorts of effects

but this is going to have a political effect as well which is i guarantee you in fact greg

hands a Tory chairman has already sweated this today the words you're going to hear again and

again and again labor run bankrupt birmingham again and again and again but of course and there

there are questions about the political management of the city it's just worth bearing in mind this

is not something that only affects labour councils conservative northamptonshire council

issued a 114 last year for exactly the same reasons and as someone put it to me earlier today this

won't be the last no way will this be the last there are loads of councils just teetering on the

range but birmingham hasn't always been labour run to be fair it's been a coalition it's been a dam

at one stage it's been yeah but it's not going to be like in the u.s where a city goes bankrupt it

really can go bankrupt do you remember Detroit so i went to the u.s when Detroit was still bankrupt

and one of the first stories we were doing was whether the Detroit art gallery was going to

have to flog its paintings to help pay the bills and i went to Detroit and there were whole streets

where nobody lived there anymore you're gonna have to have like a lewis good old childhood

memorial museum or something should raise about 65 quid a year so are your suits yeah some suits

another 65 quid a year maybe uh maybe overstating things aren't that desperate but i mean i do

want him wearing something in the studio to be honest it's all yeah you're going away you're

going to have to deal with it but do you think you get 65 quid for the suit i'm not sure tell

you what tell you what this has been a bad day for birmingham in all sorts of ways but in all

seriousness i mean the the net result of this is going to be all right john the cities don't go

bankrupt as such but what it will happen it happened in croydon recently as well local residents

will end up seeing their council tax hiked up substantially and their council services will

suffer and you know you're dealing with in birmingham's case some of the most deprived

areas in the country the people who lose out are those one million people as i say it will happen

in lots of other places as well it relates partly to the tension between central and local

government which is that central government thinks these places are all badly being really

badly managed but we have to pick up the pieces at the end of it and local government thinks

well they're just not giving us enough money and on and on and on the cycle goes we'll be back

in a moment where the news agents will be the old agents the old agents old another joke about my

suits maybe no no no it's not all about you okay fine yeah this is the news agents

the total number of valid votes given to each candidate

was as follows rishi sunak 60,399

lis truss 81,326 therefore i give notice that lis truss is elected as the leader of the

conservative and unionist party well thank you sir graham it's an honor to be elected as leader of

the conservative and unionist party i'd like to thank the 1922 committee the party chairman

and the conservative party for organizing one of the longest job interviews in history thank you

very much i'd also like to thank my family my friends my political a year ago today longest

job interview in history for the shortest premiership in history i think she probably spent more time

interviewing for that job than doing it didn't she the campaign was longer than her premiership

substantially longer and she seemed to forget in the thank yous there to thank her opponent rishi

sunak he didn't get any thanks did he but at that point where she's making that acceptance speech

she's thinking bloody hell i've done it i'm going to be the one that sees the conservative party

through to the next election that secures a victory and beyond secures the bigger majority even

than borris johnson i mean can you imagine if somebody had put that crystal ball in front of her

and said that podium that's that's going to be back there in about a month's time and what's

he going to do what what do you mean what what am i saying at the podium is there a war or something

terrible happened nope you're going to be resigning well i don't think so yeah the thing is i think

lis truss is going to end up having more influence on the conservative party over the long term sunak

is sunak is going to be if all the polls are right and we just end up in the situation we think we

do where layman win soon that will be gone and i suspect he will leave parliament very very quickly

truss is going to stick around she and her team think that they lost the battle but they're going

to win the war over the soul of the conservative party on economics and politics she considers herself

a martyr to the free market cause and free market economics and all the things that she believes in

and the situation where the conservative parties are rump and leaderless and rudderless she's not

going to come back as leader but she thinks and i think she's probably right that she can exert a

pull over the political gravity you know what i mean is that loose it misses the effect that she

is still having on most people's cost of living for reality even today yeah but i'm just saying

you know finally enough my son who's studying in canada went back yesterday and he couldn't believe

the difference in the interest rate in 12 months because she did something so extraordinary in that

short space of time to our mortgages to our cost of living to our pensions to that she destroyed

so much and so little that is still having its effect on everyone trying to pay bills now that's

so true but as we know the internal conversation of the conservative party has been so unmoored

from reality for quite a long time and they're going to become even more unmoored as it were

from reality in an opposition period so i mean she is already setting up and you know she's

talked about this in speeches and she'll do it far more in the future there is this as we know

deeply conspiratorial bent now within conservative thinking it's all about the deep state the deep

state was taking us down the economic establishment she will continue to build on that in the years

ahead i'm sure a book will be forthcoming and and she will get an audience for that within

the conservative party even certainly not within the wider country lewis you predicting

that liz trust is going to continue to play a major role in politics and public life is

possibly the best news i've heard for the news agents god bless her we were a week old when she

started um she was rock and roll she was the first person who used podcast as an insult

we're back tomorrow well i won't you two are in charge now for next oh yes you're um our console

you're heading to be our temporary console general in australia aren't you yeah we've got a very fine

high commissioner doing an excellent job yes i might be going to have lunch with her you amazed me

we'll see you soon bye the news agents with emily matress john sople and lewis goodall

this has been a global player original podcast and a persophonica production

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.