Burnham’s broken Britain: PM’s socialist dream quickly turning into a nightmare

The Telegraph God bless the Prime Minister. The words there of a prisoner released early today from jail. Burnham's barnstorming speech is already beginning to unravel with violent inmates on the streets, no appetite for reversing Brexit and the economy continuing to tank. Welcome to The Daily Tee with me, Tim Stanley. And me, Camilla Tominey. I understand this whole idea of prisons being overcrowded. In fact, an inmate from HMP Brixton said, it's really bloody crowded in there. It would be, it's a prison, mate. But at the same time, the idea of. It's not what it was. We've got much more space. But the idea of actually releasing wife beaters, I think is beyond the pale, not least when you listen to a lot of the kind of Labour lefty, Jess Phillips-esque rhetoric on violence against women and girls. We just had Bridget Phillips, and talk on The Daily Tee at the Labour Party conference about her work in a woman's refuge. What's she thinking now as Women and Equalities Minister, looking at all this? Tim, before we get into why Burnham's barnstorming speech is coming back to haunt him, shall we give our coverage at the Conservative Party conference a plug? We're going there from Saturday to. We're in Birmingham for days. It's the longest one. It is the longest one. We've got lots. For the party that's in third or second or first position, I can't. Not first, never first. Never first. But it is. It is the longest one, yes. So we've got a Sunday afternoon event with young Conservatives, if that isn't an oxymoron, and Poppy Coburn, because she's also young, which is great. And I think loads of people have signed up for that. Then on Monday, we're going to be with Jacob Rees-Mogg. Yes, for the more mature Conservative. Indeed, for the more traditional Conservative. X-rated Conservative. Indeed. For the angry Conservative, we've got Alistair Heath and Annabel Denham decrying the state of things on Tuesday. And I think in between, we're going to be speaking to Andrew Griffith, the new Shadow Chancellor, and, of course, we'll be analysing what now has to be a barnstorming speech from Kemi Badenock on Wednesday. What's she going to do to beat that? Talking of Alistair Heath, who I just had a little chat with downstairs. Now, he's of the opinion, and he's written a very punchy column to this end today, that Andy Burnham is, quotes, a maniac. And let me just break that down for you. He's basically saying, listen, this is unashamed socialism. He is basically being a left-wing radical. He's just doing it in a slightly nicer suit than Corbyn ever wore. And because he's nice looking and he's kind and he cries because his father passed away recently, the public is just going to swallow it because it's kind of nice socialism, not nasty socialism. And he points to a couple of things. The fact that he believes the Overton window has suddenly shifted on Brexit. We were talking about realigning. Then we were maybe talking about the next manifesto featuring the word rejoin. We're now openly debating, a second referendum, which is the kind of talk that gets Ed Davey cancelled. But apparently coming from the man from Makerfield, it's fine, even though his own constituency voted 65% leave. Alistair also concerned about this proportional representation proposal. The idea that he actually wants to change the electoral system to basically fix it for Labour to be in power forevermore. Andy Burnham keeps talking about consensus, but there's a paradox here, which is that his, "agenda for Britain" is just what Labour has always wanted to do. Yes. It's a bucket list of stuff that either wasn't really discussed at the last election, or in order to win, Starmer had to ignore or reject. So Starmer had red lines on the EU, which included staying out of the customs union, staying out of the single movement, no free movement. Yeah. Burnham has just torn that up. Now, if you're a left wing person, that makes sense because you want to be back in the EU. Same with PR, same with a national care service, same with a whole lot of other stuff, which just we were not told about before. But the frustrating thing is, it's a very radical set of proposals, but he keeps framing it as consensus. It's not though, is it? And because, as I have said in a previous podcaster, he's a very good communicator, and the right can't ignore that or pretend he's not, he might get away with it, because the vibe is that he's meeting the public halfway, when in fact he's not. He's dragging them to the left. And Alistair's very important point, which I'm sure we'll come back to, PR is the most boring element of that. Public has already rejected it. We had a referendum on the alternative vote and people said no. As by the way, the public said no to devolution in the Northeast about 20 years ago in a referendum then. Said no to remaining in the EU, I mean. But PR is actually very important, because what it does is it guarantees that you can never ever again, have a one party government. Everything becomes a rolling sequence of coalitions. Yes. And if you think about it, who will always be the linchpin to those coalitions? Labour. No, the Lib Dems. Oh, God. No, seriously, you will always get Labour. Yes, that's right. Ed Davey, the kingmaker. Labour and the Tories/Reform getting the most votes, getting the most seats in parliament. But you will always have to reach out to smaller parties in order to command a majority. And Alistair's point is that, a lot of Labour MPs actually don't like this. And have always been opposed to PR for precisely that reason. And Burnham is basically throwing his own party under the bus. It is more important to him to have a permanent coalitional centre left establishment in Britain than it is for Labour to win majorities. And why is he doing this? It all comes back to that strange obsession with Margaret Thatcher. Yes. The idea that in the 80s, not only did Maggie sell things off, but she also, kneecapped local government, like Militant and Liverpool, because that was going so well. And through the first-past-the-post system, she was able to command large majorities despite never winning more than 44% of the vote. Yes. And the left, along with wanting to muzzle the popular press, has ever since then had this fantasy of, could we break the Tory party or reform forever, by changing the electoral system, so that you can never get rid of us? Well, isn't he in that mission reminiscent of what we heard from Liz Truss yesterday. Liz Truss thinks the entire mechanics of Blair and Brown needs to be smashed up in order for Britain to prosper. Yes. Burnham is equally radical, just on the left, in saying the entire mechanics of Thatcherism needs to be smashed up in order for Britain to prosper. Yes. You made that point about Keir Starmer. I mean, actually, Andy Burnham, in all of his, "We don't want point scoring. We want political consensus." It's nonsense. He's basically saying, "When I say political consensus, I mean, I need to persuade people to agree with me and do what I want to do for Labour." Starmer said, "I'm going to lead a government of service." He made a point, didn't he, on the steps of Downing Street, saying, "Even if you didn't vote for me, I want to take you with me." Yes. Whereas, Burnham is kind of pretending to do that, but he's much, much more dogmatic than Starmer ever wants. There is something, by the way, maniacal about the PR, if it allows, for instance, Zach Polanski of the Greens to have any role in a functioning government in the UK. This guy is an extremist. But that's more important to the left. His party is. I know, but that is so irresponsible. It's more important to the left that you never. I know, I know, but it's more important to the left in its Manichaean vision of good versus evil, left good, right evil. It's more important to them to always keep Nigel Farage or Kemi Beidnok out of government than it is to run the risk of letting in Zach Polanski. I know, but people. That just doesn't bother them. But Zach Polanski with the whole, "Let's legalize heroin." was coming back from a politics A-level lesson and said, "Did you know that the Green councillor has called for all prisons to be closed down?" Yes. I said, "No, I hadn't heard that, but it doesn't surprise me. You know, let's just. And we're going to get onto early release in a minute." And there are strong anti-Semitic vibes coming out of them as well. Of course. And I think that one thing that was underappreciated about the conference was how in 12 months it's gone from a party inadequately, unconvincingly trying to walk a line between Israel and Palestine. Yes. to a party which is now just pro-Palestine. Yes, it is. And that's a big shift that he has pulled off. And by putting Ed Miliband in as foreign secretary, that cements this. That's a big change in Labour Party policy and in British policy that I don't think has been appreciated. But having said all of this, if his speech was about the past, Margaret Thatcher, we're going to hear a lot about her in the next few years. It's going to be something so boring, isn't it? If the speech was largely about the past, and the future, because many of these things were about things that are either going to go out to a commission, or there's a report being done at the moment, or it'll be something we'll put to the public at the next manifesto. Have a consultation. A consultation, as a number of people have pointed out. Well, what about Britain today? Yes. And there was very little in the speech about the actual things happening in the world right now, and what he's going to do about them before the next election, because if, as he keeps saying, if he keeps telling us, I'm going to sit out my full parliament, I'm not going to have an election for another three years. Well, not just that. If he's going to say, I've got a 10-year plan, which if you don't mind, is a bit presumptuous. It is presumptuous, but if you've introduced PR and you've devolved all power to local Labour lefty councils, you could have a thousand-year plan because we can never get rid of the buggers. But if you're saying, hold tight, you've got three years left of me, then it's reasonable to say, so, what's going to happen? going to be in the budget? What are you going to do about these early releases, what are you going to do about these Iranian terror alleged Iranian terror cells what are you going to do about hijackings of planes well he hasn't even mentioned the hijacking of the plane so when you talk about the change stance on Israel that was exemplified by foreign secretary Ed Miliband becoming I think one of the first foreign secretaries not to attend the labor friends of Israel event at conference right normally somebody very very senior goes along they didn't Lucy Powell who then said you've got long faces why do you look so miserable a bit depressed don't you think it's like a fox wandering into a chicken house and saying you all look a bit down what's the matter with you might never happen but don't you think it's extraordinary I mean he might do this by the time this podcast goes to air but that he hasn't mentioned the fact that a very brave Israeli truck driver I think it was has intervened in what could be the next 9-11 in Tel Aviv yeah and stopped a copilot from bringing down a jet in the middle of Israel there's a very funny meme doing the rounds that says you can now pay extra on some flights to sit next to an Israeli yeah well there is that yeah there is one thing to be said for everyone having to serve in the IDF and that's that you know they can pilot planes and things in moments of abject crisis do watch our chat by the way with the aviation expert who talked us through some of the changes since 9-11 that have led to a degree of danger when it comes to pilots either just going mad in the cockpit or indeed having ideological aims should we go through how this barnstorming speech is now becoming slightly unraveled with sort of 20 well no 48 hours on now and we've got a number of policies that have come to bite him on the burn and backside which are the result of choices yes of course the choice to begin with to allow for early release of prisoners now a total of around four and a half thousand are going to be released over the next 10 months and seven hundred have been released this morning including violent offenders and domestic abusers now of course we should add Burnham did intervene to stop for instance the release of the killers of PC Andrew Harper yes but some wrongans are still being let out and we know that because well one can actually quote the prisoners being released themselves yes Dean 37 warned that wrongans are being let out early he said all the people who knock their misses about shouldn't be let out I didn't do anything like that he said no fair enough this is from Brixton prison where 44 people have been released Elliot 50 who was given a 20-week sentence for stealing a pair of glasses from Selfridges was released after seven weeks and said that he needed help rather than being released from jail should have gone to spec savers sorry quote it's help I need he said it's an addiction to stealing next to sex addiction that is that is the hardest one to have to cope with did he steal the spectacles just to see more clearly when he was thieving stuff who knows carry on he said well I love by the way an addiction to stealing means just wandering into boots opticians and nicking 60 pair of glasses it does not mean picking out a pair of glasses in Selfridges but when Elliot was asked what his chances were on the outside he replied 100% I'm getting recalled he's got great confidence in his own kleptomania there at HMP Cardiff a 32 year old man jailed for burglary who gave his name only as Tom said of the early release system I think it's SHIT to be honest with you I'd happily spend my time in there I mean I've been doing it for 17 years I'll probably be back in the next month or two it's like a reset for me this is yeah I take beer drugs go back in put on a bit of weight do it all again I've got nothing better to do with myself I'm homeless I've got nothing better to do with myself I'm homeless so what else am I going to do you can't be homeless and sober at the same time he's probably right by the way that's one of my diary entries from when I was university prisoners leaving HMP Wandsworth also thank Mr Burnham one left wearing a black balaclava and shouted God bless the Prime Minister honestly I mean to be fair you can make the argument well the Tories started this they released a load of prisoners but let's be honest they didn't release violent prisoners and on a serious note I think it's a good thing that we've got a lot of prisoners and on a serious note Rosie Adams writes in to say when you consider that a huge percentage of murders are committed by spouses some the coercive partners and others those who have finally snapped this is absolutely deplorable migrants are put into military camps and HMOs while ordinary decent and terrified relatives are having to leave their homes for safety she's pointing to the fact that some battered wives have literally had to go into hiding because their ex-husbands and partners are being released which is frankly an absolutely terrible thing to do and I think it's a very frightening prospect yes deport the foreign nationals taking up our jail spaces and coercing inmates to follow their ideology or else and deport the lot pronto leave the family abusers right where they are now she makes a very very valid point I understand this whole idea of prisons being overcrowded in fact an inmate from HMP Brixton said it's really bloody crowded in there it would be it's a prison mate but at the same time the idea of it's not what it was it's not what it was we said much more space but the idea of of actually releasing wife beaters yes I think is beyond the pale not least when you listen to a lot of the kind of Labour lefty Jess Phillips rhetoric on yes violence against women and girls we just had Bridget Philipson talk on the daily tea at the Labour Party conference about her work in a woman's refuge what's she thinking now as women and equalities minister looking at all this yes I mean you know I just find it very funny that the prisoners sound like they're not the same people they're not the same people they're not the same people they sound like GB News pundits right how dare you there's they said they would you might be that's no no that is my model of soundness is what I'm saying oh okay fine as is so often the case with the left they have this idealized noble savage vision of prisoners or the homeless that they're all these fallen angels yes who just need a little bit of TLC yeah it's like Andy Burnham with his whole training uh uh shtick isn't it yes it's all it's all we just need to rather than punishing people let's just help them and train them hold their hand put an arm around hug a hoodie they'll never go on benefits again no and the bill will be reduced by 90 percent well that's why the Tories according to a commission but when you actually speak to prisoners they say things like oh there are some wrong-uns in there I know to be fair that explains the completely contrary approach that the Conservatives are taking with their tough love yes tough love for youngsters who are not in employment or training actually tell them get out of bed get a job and if you don't we're going to take away your universal universal credit you cannot go from university onto universal credit uh and at the same time they want to rewire the benefit system so that uh you'll be you won't get the full universal credit unless you've put a certain number of years of payment into the system through working and through taxes it's a it's a contrast between uh touchy-feely yes and smashy testy yeah or it's messy yes exactly that's how the next election is going to be for yes mr nice guy mr and mrs nasty yes on the right and let's see what the public wants do they want nice or nasty well I don't believe I don't believe that we have to choose from this horrible cosmic dessert trolley of hell no I believe we can have something in between but I just it's so depressing that labor always goes this way beginning by saying let's let's try a different way yes let's let some people out of everyone a home let's spend billions to try to put people into sheltered accommodation or something and a couple of years later it always always ends with a prisoner coming out and saying oh we're back in there in a couple of months well to be fair who can blame them because at least they don't have to pay energy bills if they're in the cells but don't worry because Andy Burnham that VAT has come off energy and that's all going to save us well uh not very much because diesel's now at two pounds energy bills are going up anyway in the new year did you manage to catch James Murray the treasury minister on Nick Ferrari this morning he was asked to count the cost and account for how much money would be saved by this VAT cut and this happened what the prime minister announced was to remove VAT of electricity bills for six months yes and from October how much does that cost what would be the VAT take for the treasury for that six months yes and from October how much does that cost six months period well that depends exactly on usage um over those six months uh but it's a six month plan to take VAT I mean roughly what how much is it going to not bring in you must have there must be a ballpark figure as how much this is going to cost um yes but I haven't got that figure in front of me but that's the exact amount will depend hang on so you you're the financial secretary of the treasury you've taken obviously a very eye-catching decision along with senior colleagues and you don't know how much it's going to cost you um well I haven't got the figure in front of me because it's a fairly relevant figure the actual amount will depend on exactly what the usage is I appreciate that but you you have worked out with your colleagues well this is whenever whoever came up with the idea you say okay yeah that will help people they need help we're a government a cost of living government but how much am I not going to take uh yes sorry I haven't got that figure right in front of me uh this morning four times and you haven't I find that extraordinary I have had some experience interviewing James Murray in the past um and it's not always easy for him he is the person that absolutely sticks to the government script even when you're asking him to deviate and just express an opinion on literally can you please just Can you just answer just a question? So then Ferrari gets into, you know, can you even tell me what you had for breakfast this morning? And then James Murray jokes back, I'm going to have to check my notes and come back to you on that, which was actually quite funny. But the point is the growing frustration with the government coming out with stuff that they can't actually explain properly or indeed do the maths for. We're streeting in his Space Force. Exactly. He was asked about the cost of something, wasn't it? And he said, I'm embarrassed I don't have it in front of me. And I just think that's unforgivable. Yes, it is unforgivable. Because it's our money. It's our money. Well, talking of our money, we've also got, so we're kind of on to problem number three for Burnham. Yes. UK borrowing costs at highest level since 1998. Again, it's the good old fashioned guilt yields, which you and I, we don't understand, but what it means is that the cost of debt is more expensive than it's ever been. Yes. More expensive even than nine out of 10 Liz Truss's tenure. And I say that, Tim, just to goad you, because I think I should. The FTSE has fallen by 2%. Basically, the economy's in turmoil, and we didn't hear very much about any of his economic plans in his great big, tearful, barnstorming, not tub thumping speech bathed in the light of a miner's lamp. We're going to stick to the fiscal rules, he said. Yeah, he doesn't know what they are, though, unfortunately. But he also made loads of spending promises. Oh, dear. That fall of 2% on FTSE is the worst since May and is probably linked to the Iran war. This is why things are only going to get worse, because diesel, oil are all being attacked. And there are going to be bottlenecks in supply. And Britain is unusually overexposed to that. By the way, this is where, if he was still Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband was, that is why, that is why, that is why you need to have solar and wind. OK, fine, but we don't have it yet. Yes. Also, with this whole AI revolution and data centres, would you mind just taking a decision on Jack Doran Rosebank, for the love of God? But no, Burnham's worried about the optics. We know that much. By the way, the other question that was asked of. He doesn't care. Did you read, did you read? Just I'll throw in here very quickly, very good piece. I hate to recommend rivals, but Janan Ganesh in the FT. Right. Made a very good point. There's no growth in this, in his speech. And it's not just that there's no growth. He talked about good growth, good growth. Any growth. As if growth has a moral quality. I suppose it could be if it's a contrast between slavery and sweatshops versus, you know, people being properly employed. But the point is, it's in his head. He is culture-warified growth. So is he saying that Thatcher growth, which averaged. Averaged about 3% a year. Because it was service economy, because it was finance markets, because it was people getting their house and buying and selling it, that's all bad, immoral growth. Right. Which kind of in the long run stains your soul somehow. But good growth is locally devolved regional assembly mandating factory-producing widgets. Well, I'll tell you what is bad growth, Eurozone growth. I think we can all agree that the growth is bad in the Eurozone because every five minutes, the chancellor tells us we've got the best growth in the Eurozone and we're all meant to be very proud of it. Yet in the same breath, this mass devolutionist, this person who thinks that Westminster has got too much control, now wants to not just devolve it to metropolitan mayors, but to give it back to Brussels. So can we please discuss, frankly, in my mind, the sheer lunacy of not just saying, well, actually, we might rejoin in the manifesto, but now engendering a debate about a second, second referendum. Yes. Ten years on from Brexit, we had that once-in-a-lifetime vote. He's representing a constituency that overwhelmingly voted leave. There is a huge amount of debate as to how much economic harm Brexit has caused. And actually, you can't have it both ways, by the way. Is it Thatcher? Is it Brexit? Is it global headwinds? To what extent can you take responsibility for two economically illiterate budgets, which literally led to the resignation of Rachel Reeves and, by association, Keir Starmer? I mean, if it's all going so bloody swimmingly well under Labour, why don't we have any growth at all? Why are billionaires leaving in their droves? Why are businesses literally got their head in their hands right now going, oh, my God, why is the FTSE down by 2%? Please answer all of these questions. Well, and the Eurozone does not have good growth or very much growth. It doesn't have any growth, Tim. It's not doing a lot of growing. And I've greatly enjoyed Andrew Neil going on various television programmes and saying to young Labour ministers, are you mad? Are you insane? Because, as he points out, the EU is a different place from what it was when we voted to leave it. It's now more right wing. It's going to be dominated in the future by populists who are really more interested in it becoming a sort of a protectionist zone with a big wall to keep foreigners out of it. That's their chief concern at the moment. And the price of us going back into it would be enormous. Exactly. Exactly. We'd lose the rebate, presumably. We would have to accept free movement. Annie Burnham says leaving the EU meant we lost control over our borders. That's very strange. You can have an exchange agreement with France, which we've been doing one in, one out. Although that's been canned. So why don't, I tell you what, why don't we reward the French for literally doing less than nothing with the 650 million we've already paid them to police our borders, which basically means waiving migrants, onto boats from Dunkirk and Calais. Thank you very much, French. Let's look at that and say, I tell you what we should do. We should cede more power to the French and the Germans and Brussels. Are these people completely insane? It's not even supported by the public. Should the UK rejoin the EU? Yes, 21%. No, 79%. That's on the basis of 25,000 votes. That's from our readers. OK, we are telegraphians. Those are our readers. But if you look at other polls, you will often find, that rejoining wins. Yeah, but only when they don't spell it out. No, no, no. But if you add conditions, if you say, are you happy to rejoin if it means. Joining the Euro. Joining the Euro, single market, customs union, Freemium, then the proposition tends to lose. Just to mention the one in, one out scheme, that was the pilot scheme that allowed the UK to return some small boat arrivals in exchange for someone coming from France who had a legitimate claim to be in Britain. Total number of people who have been removed to France, under that scheme, in a year, 1,500. So it just simply didn't work. But I come back to the culture war approach to economics. Even if membership of Europe wouldn't do much for us, it falls into the category in Burnham's brain of good growth, much as wind and solar are good growth. And this is because, as a proper social democrat or socialist, he thinks society can be engineered, that you can make moral choices about the way that the economy should be. Whereas we tend to think how the economy functions is in large part a product of the choices that individuals make. I wish to set up a business. Changes in taste, people want to buy this, not that. Or most importantly, technology. So there is no point anymore producing buggy whips for horse carriages. It might be good growth for us to have loads of horse carriages, because I love horses pulling carts. I think that's fantastic. That's good growth. But the reality is no one drives them anymore, so you don't want to have them. So the world is currently going through this AI revolution that demands that we accept the way things are going and we help to facilitate it. And that's chiefly done by the government taking steps to make sure that energy is as abundant and cheap as possible. But that's not the Burnham approach. The Burnham approach is the good growth, is the moral growth, which says, how do you feel? Do you feel empowered in your area? Do you have lots of European wind farms with diversity in your local region? I know, but then the irony of that as well, these wind farms and these solar farms all using parts from China. Second of all, yes, growth is bad if it's created by energy I consider to be dirty. But let's just deal with the actual reality of the ground. Is there anything more sort of totemic of Britain's decline right now in the face of Burnham's, frankly, nauseatingly schmaltzy rhetoric? I'm sorry, but the more that I listen to that speech and clips from it, the more I find it nauseating than the announcement by Greggs, his beloved sausage roll chain. This is the place where the prime minister, because I don't know if you know, but he's from the north and he's just like the ordinary common man who enjoys a sausage roll and a cup of coffee. That's just how down to earth he is. He's constantly in Greggs. He practically lives in Greggs. Okay, he is that real. Greggs has announced that because of automation in factories, they've decided actually, let's let go of around 4,000 staff because we can just get robots, the killer robots you and I saw at conference, we just get robots to make these sausage rolls. It's awful, isn't it? I mean, it's horrible. But there's no, yeah, but where's the actual, so this is the other great irony. All of this kind of like flat cap wearing, bucket hat wearing, I'm for the worker. It's 1975. Yes. We have got actual factory workers at Greggs now in abject jeopardy. Yes. Where's the protestation about that? What are you going to say on a Liverpudlian stage that can convince those workers that you do actually stand for them rather than basically standing for this kind of mythical, I don't know who it is, some kind of like Morris Glassman would say, the sort of globalist, the sort of the good person, the campaigner, the person who believes believes in, as you say, good growth. the actual worker? What about the actual worker whose job is going to be wiped out? This is when they say this stuff as well about green jobs. We're going to create thousands of green jobs. Where are they? What do they look like? How do the NEETs tap into AI, by the way? How are we re-energizing this entire new industry in technological innovation? And back to the point, how are we going to power it if you can't even take a decision on the North Sea? Yes. Well, in the same way, people have been quoting Dennis Healy, who in the past said, you cannot have hospitals, schools, and factories without a strong defense. Likewise, you cannot have the romantic 1970s view of Britain that Andy Bonham has without a flourishing economy, which is modern, high-tech, and moving with the global winds, rather than pushing. Against them. So this big change is going to come. It's awful. If I could flick a switch and make it not happen, it would not happen, but it's going to happen. So the number one task of government right now should be to make sure that it happens in such a way that we get the most money out of it. And you have to look at what Britain is naturally strong at and say, let's do more of that and just write the rules or tear up the rules so that that bit of it flourishes. In Andy Bonham's good versus bad economic imagination, for example, the finance sector is evil. The success of London and Canary Wharf, in their mind, has come at the expense of the regions. I'm not quite sure it's that clear of a trade-off, but okay, maybe. Let's assume that is correct. Nonetheless, it's one thing we're good at. Yes, services sector. So you've got a choice. You're going to cripple that? Well, because it doesn't involve northern factories, then Andy Bonham. He doesn't want to acknowledge the growth there. We've got to establish a rule in this podcast that we stop saying northern as if it's a pejorative. We don't mean it like that. We don't mean it's a pejorative. We mean it's a cliche that it's being deployed in the most cynical or even worse, idealistic way that he had. I'm sure he closes his eyes and he has this vision of Britain. And it is how he remembers the north from his childhood and everything looks better in your childhood. By the way, mine was Margaret Thatcher. Yes. And I remember things being better back then in many ways. But you cannot, you cannot engineer society and the economy to reflect your ideal from 50 years ago. Yeah. Also, you've got to deal with the world as it is rather than as you wish it to be. So we have the battle between the nasties and the nices. We have the battle between, you mentioned Dennis Healy. So it's eyelash theory versus eyebrow theory. And we have the battle, frankly, which is always the case with left and right. Idealism versus realism. Yes. I'm sorry, that's what this comes down to. And human nature versus the engineered soul or the imagined soul. So to bring this all the way back to prisons and benefits, reality is human beings are generally good. And I believe as a Christian are made to be good, but we're also fallen and we're prey to temptation. And if you build a welfare system, if you build a justice system, if you build a society that rewards the wrong decisions, people will make the wrong decisions. So in order to actually have a good moral outcome, you have to be tough and you have to say, no, you have to put some money in to get the benefits. Or if you steal that pair of glasses, you're going back inside. You have to say those things because if you do the opposite and pretend that we're all angels whose behavior is perverted by capitalism. Mm. So if we just get rid of all the tough stuff and we just give trust people and just give them handouts and just open up the prisons, then people will naturally behave like living saints. We've run this experiment so many times in the last few decades, and it's so frustrating that our prime minister has decided that we should run it again. Yes. And he's doing it without a popular mandate. Again, to come back to what we were talking about about consensus. The consensus that got Starmer elected was a centrist consensus. Yes. He could only win that massive majority, perhaps by lying to us, but by saying, not going to go back into the EU, tough on crime, all this sort of stuff. And I will reform the benefit system because don't forget, he tried. And I won't increase income tax, et cetera. So he gave Labour the majority. The Labour majority then said, actually, we'd like socialism. So they carried out a coup, got rid of him, brought in Andy Burnham. He does not have a mandate to do any of this stuff, but he's going to pretend that he does. And he's going to deploy his fantasy vision of Britain from 50 years ago to try to persuade us that this is what we all secretly really want. We just don't know it. Why we've been voting against it at every election since 1979. Funny that. I don't know. Not on my watch, Tim Stanley. I'm joking. Tim Stanley, enjoy your sermon. Amen to everything Tim Stanley has just said. And we will be back with more of this tomorrow, 5pm. you