Sam and Anne's guide to the term ahead

Hello, Ed Conway here. Here is what might sound like a slightly random question. What do airports, bananas, and a pair of shotally made running trainers from the 1970s have in common? On the surface, not very much. But, on my podcast Stuff Matters, I will uncover the deeper stories behind each of them. You will see how, together, they tell a fascinating new story about the world we live in. The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow. Hello, and welcome to the final of the summer series of politics at Sam and Anne's, the podcast that tells you what's coming up in British politics. It's week four of August. The heat wave may be over, but we're still on fire, aren't we? And our host pipe of news, oh yeah, bringing you this bumper back to school edition of the podcast. Look, what's coming up for Andy Burnham's premiership, this autumn. I'm Sam Cotes of Sky News. And I'm Anne McKellvoy from Politica, wondering how many metaphors Sam can get into an intro? This is the last weekly Monday episode of our podcast. And full of post-holiday, them, we are back daily after the bank holiday. And then every Monday to Thursday, we'll have everything you need to know about the week ahead in British politics in under 20 minutes in your podcast feeds before 8am plus those debrief specials on bigger occasions we know you like. But this autumn, there is Anne innovation. Yes, we're doing something new and it's an exciting one. It's also potentially, well, there's a little bit of jeopardy. And now we've been noticing that a lot of people and I genuinely mean quite a lot have actually been watching Anne, rather than just listening, watching the video versions of our summer special episodes on YouTube. So with that in mind, from next Tuesday, we'll be in vision too, if you can handle it and you can find us on YouTube. What's the jeopardy? Well, as you know, dear listener, we record at 640. So that means it will capture every yarn, every eye roll, if I'm going on about, even the stairs of my podcast partner. You'll see our homes are caffeine intake or exotic European destinations. Otherwise known as hotel curtains. Spoken there with the language of a man who is not fretting too much, Sam about how to get your eye makeup on at 530. Yep, you're going to be seeing us as we really are recording before most of your breakfasts or or commutes and to reassure you, you will still get the pure audio version in your feeds pre 8am and the visual version on YouTube not long after big shout out on all of this to our producer Evan Hall who's nimble fingers and even more agile brain will make it all happen. Well, you'll view on the makeup question. I think I am going to have to do something more to assist viewers with the shock of what I look at 640 in the morning when we record each day. But and I am reassured that our listeners and soon our viewers want the analysis, the insights, the schemes and the Kremlin website updates as leaps at least as much as they want eye candy. So with that in mind, we've been rinsing our contacts talking to people around Westminster. Let's get on with the meat of the show. There's the energy price cap rising on Wednesday this week. It's expected to go up by more than the value of Andy Burnham's week one that price cut on energy bills. So to put some figures on that, well, corn will insight think that the cap will go up gross as 66 pounds a year from this week. It would have gone up a further 45 pounds if we haven't hadn't hadn't had sorry that measure by Burnham to remove the 5% that from household electricity bills. So some relief there. Then the week after Parliament is back and we're going to have a huge number of statements all of those announcements we got over the summer and remember that the new Prime Minister started after Parliament had broken up for the summer. He's not appeared there yet in Israel and we haven't had a PMQ's own joy. We look forward to that. A little thing I picked up and it flows on from what you were just saying about the idea that the VAT cut that Burnham announced doesn't cover the increase in the electricity price cap, the energy price cap. And it's exactly that kind of thing that's one of the reasons that I'm told this government is explicitly moving away from quote and quote cost-of-living language. Now that's the language you heard from Kirstama and Rishisuna. But Andy Burnham's not going to use it. He's going to start to lean into this concept of the government giving people breathing space with their day-to-day lies because they know that the cost of living is to explicitly link to inflation which is completely out of that control that we saw from the inflation figures last week and it has the potential to keep going up because of Iran. Right. Back to today and what we're aiming to do to that I think is quite a practical episode looking at all of the different bits and pieces for the autumn term. So you can book mark a lot of the little things that we expect to going to happen along the way. But we're just going to take you through sort of five big things he's doing and needs to deal with. But just before we do that and we've had a month of the guy, what's your impression in kind of in 60 seconds of how Andy Burnham started? Well, I think you've just taken us into the kind of shifts that he's quietly making. Drawing a line yes with the Starmer Europe. So the breathing space message is intended to manage expectations. Some things can be altered quickly, others can't. We've seen the new PM focus on speaking to voters directly all these videos over the summer. Quite pragmatic on small beer topics so to speak from business rightly for pubs to keeping bus fares down. Ending rough sleeping target by Christmas. That's certainly ambitious. But he's chosen at least a conscience stirring issue. Sam I think he knows appeals to a lot of people who really want to see that Labour still stands for something very values driven. And he does have on hand Louise Casey who is an acknowledged expert in bringing forward a work to a plan on that. I think there are also some implicit retreats from the kind of soft left agenda a lot of his original fans would have wanted. So there's no mandatory target for instance all social rent homes in new developments. Now that was actually proposed in the planning policy framework from the government at the end of last year. There was no sign that Andy Burnham then would have disagreed with it. My box inbox has a lot of I rate comment on that by the way. And there is a slightly muddled message on asylum which I think we might just end up having a look at as we we go along you know that message. I'm going to spread out more asylum seekers across the country at the same time he wants to show that he understands the concerns and the concerns that are driving a lot of Labour voters into the arms of reform. So we're quite interested to see where that lands. I think he has to sort of sharpen up a bit on that because it's been it's been one thing and a bit of another over the last weeks. That's interesting. Okay here's my 60-second review. The thing I've been most struck by with Andy Burnham's premiership is how little he's done and in particular how little he's spent money-wise. Now that might sound a curious thing to praise a Prime Minister for but I I'd be really struck his opening has been big on rhetoric but short on decisions that hem him in. And the reason I think that's important is it's such a big contrast to his predecessors Keir Starmer who within you know the first month had done the Winterfuel cart and got the big black hole all of these things to find his premiership within the first month of Liz Truss. She'd spent nearly a hundred billion pounds on the energy price help. That was pretty much actually in the first week. Both of those things big decisions taking a hurry arguably too fast done at once both helped to end their premierships and Andy Burnham's kind of very much done the opposite. Instead much of the first month has been pure politics talk about devolution while at the same time every big spending issue from defense to social care to social housing sort of put on ice while they work out a longer term plan of how to pay for it. So his aim has been to buy himself time and you know that also matters because that's not the Andy Burnham we were used to as you were saying in your review. We were used to a guy who would shoot from the hip spending tens of billions of pounds here and there to compensate what's be where women in an interview you know throughout suggestions of boring more. That's just not the guy that we've had that Andy Burnham appears to be put back in a box and he's begging for time. Now he absolutely absolutely needs to now come up with plans to solve those issues you know and like homelessness in Manchester he didn't quite solve the big things he set out to although I'm told that was it's about to do with a sign-um decisions interestingly which he doesn't mention but the big thing for me is and I think it's a positive is that he's simply brought himself breathing space by being quite good at politics. I love the idea that there's a sort of Dorian Gray and Andy Burnham hypnotic somewhere in Manchester. I don't feel policies at all. I love it. But let's go to explore that. So that theme as we go forward. The big contours of this autumn for everybody's diaries and notebooks. Sam I think you've been seeing it in the frame of three big interventions which I thought was very smart which is party conference in Liverpool from September the 27th remembering that last time he went to he went there to begin to try to topple Keir Starman and everyone went off, well that didn't work out well, here we are a year later. So he can feel some pride on that. The budget on October the 28th, that's quite early. The 10-year plan, not another one, but a bit like the short-lived predecessor plan of Kirsta, I mean, both leaders do seem to love these long-term horizons. That was promised on the steps of Downing Street, and I think it's likely to come in November, as far as we know. They are deliberately decoupled from the budget and the budget cycle and pushed later, which may also have its reasons in again, in terms of managing expectations. These seem to be the big trio of pillars for the autumn. There's no spending review. That's pushed off to next year, which is quite a long time, after such a significant restart budget. And I wondered what you made of that. Is that a dog not barking in the night? - I think that's more because they didn't need to have one this early, that was reason one. And reason two, because bluntly, you've got budgets planned out for several more years to come. And secondly, there are a hell of a lot of work. And I think one of the things that this government has shown to me that they're quite conscious of at the moment is the need to sequence, not rush, spread things out through the remainder of their time in this parliament. So there are two strategic reasons why. Another little thing I've picked up is that, you know, in that big three pillars thing, there's no big rush to go on the kind of gigantic premiership beginning foreign trips that we usually have. Now, I think John Healy, the chance low is gonna do a lot of foreign travel with G7s and IMFs. Ed Miliband has already begun doing his foreign travel as you would expect as foreign secretary. But I've heard that the PM's team has been telling people internally that his main focus is party conference and then the budget. And then he'll think a bit more about the international stage after that. Now, of course, events might have to bring forward a White House trip or a visitor key, for instance, but I was told pretty much the time of recording, not to expect a White House visit, you know, in September, in terms of the planning. So internally, it sounds like Bernam is pushing on with his desire to emphasize the domestic in contrast to Kirstama. Does that work? Do you think that's a good idea around? - Well, I think it's quite complexifying if you are, say, Ed Miliband or the top brass, the foreign office, a new foreign secretary, he's clearly enjoying this new gig. He wants to step out Ed does as much as he can. But it's really hard for his planners to sort that out. Until they know if Andy Burnham is the prime minister is going to something or not. This is something I think that Bernam will have to get used to when you're prime minister, that everybody else's decisions or calendars and diary commitments fall over from yours. So it's sort of saying, well, I'll kind of make it up as I go along and then I'll see how I go. That can be a little bit difficult when you're trying to sequence things on the international stage. Obviously, there are particular dates when other leaders are going to go. I'll give you an example. If you look at something like you in general assembly coming up at the back end of September, it's a bit opaque what's going to happen there. Now, at some point when it was Kirstama, he usually thought he'd show up to most things, right? And I'd get on a plane or so with my colleagues and yours. But it's a bit harder if you don't really know if the prime minister is minded that way. And that's so interesting what you say about no eminent big sit down in Washington because there's also a school of thought advising Bernam, this isn't only foreign offices like Jonathan Powell as well, who will be saying like, it's easier to meet Donald Trump for the first time properly on his home territory. Yes, it's got risks, but trying to do it at these summits when it can be a bit of a drive by the US President, it's very easily distracted as we know. And as you can end up being a bit dismissed and that would look terrible. So I think there's a big question there, which until they resolve that, we will keep asking when's it going to meet Donald Trump. So I think that is something that they maybe will need to give attention to quite quickly. I get the sense that is in the weeds and people are trying to get a bit of attention there to talk about it. So I think there's still quite a lot of talk going on around that and how that will be done or will it, will we just see more of Ed Miliband out and about in the short term. Yeah, this 10 year plan, right? A lot of that obviously flows from global events and more local political events and the economy. But do we actually know very much about it? Well, this is one of the things I've been digging around about trying to find out a little bit more about. As it's built right now to me, and we'll see whether it remains like this, but it sounds like a really big deal. I'm told the 10 year plan is the moment the government sets out its overarching narrative. But there's an acceptance that they came in very quickly without the kind of running to an election where you can plan for things and the kind of the months, even the sort of full leadership contest that gives you a bit of breathing space. They hadn't had that time. So they're using the 10 year plan as the moment to sort of launch that. Almost think a bit like the kind of coalition plan that came in in 2010 after the Tories and Lib Dems came together. What it'll involve is a series of documents that are done thematically. It's not one document per department, but a series of themes that cut across Whitehall. I've told that there could be, quote unquote, chunkier structural stuff in there. So that means maybe changes to the way that government works, maybe even quite the structure of it. Let me give you a couple of concrete examples of what I think we'll see in the 10 year plan. First of all, essentially that's the moment we'll get the deal around the utility sector. We know that Thameswater, the utilities more generally, Andy Burnham worries that they put profit before people. That doesn't work for taxpayers. It doesn't work for citizens. That's the moment, I think, where they start to come up with a solution for that. But I also think in the 10 year plan, there'll be more stuff around growth. So one example, like I felt I picked up, was round about then we could get changes to the way that everything knits together. So you could, and this is one thing I think is being discussed, even see an end to something like natural England, the body that looks at sort of supporting nature and is often used in size in development cases. But potentially even its abolition. I feel like some naughty bits of white hall are in this new team site. So I'm actually thinking of Deffra, the government department for food, environment, and rural affairs, which somebody's just saying, it's a total mess. The quote actually was Deffra's such a basket case, it's worse than DCMS, the culture department. So that's Angela Regal's department, worse than Leeson Andy's department, if you want some names by those departmental structures. So it's not just a speech, this 10 year plan. It's a set of documents, and it's a set of documents that's designed to be, yes, full of hope and direction, but also quite chewy in the moment that we can see some stuff change. And I would guess that they don't want to call this another cross departmental approach, breaking silos, let alone missions. Does anyone remember the missions of Pierre Starve? You'll get like big extra points if you can rattle them off. About in the missions, just one of the areas and when they put in a completely new media strategy like whole government communications service with a new boss, David Titsmore is there. One of the big questions was, is anyone understand the missions? And I think the answer to that was not flattering. Just some of those things you've mentioned, I think I'm seeing fascinating whether a 10 year approach is the right one. We often hear it said, and there's a lot of truth in it, that if you've got problems with planning with infrastructure, if you often take the idea of China, go out of the air, of course, many downsides to doing things the way the Chinese do, but you know that if something is promised, there's a fighting chance that it will actually appear, if it's promised in the next plan and it won't just disappear under a welter of objections and kwango, so I do understand that. But I do think there are pitfalls here. One that I just know a bit more about probably is water. And yes, I understand the profit before people point, and I know it's very much on people's minds, if you spend any time dealing with water companies, particularly the very underperforming ones. You know what you're talking about on that score, but it's massively expensive to bring water into public ownership. Whatever the form of air you talk about, mutualizing, you can smudge it, you can fudge it. I don't think we're going to be looking other than perhaps in extreme cases and it tends water is always the one that is presented because it has failed in its duties quite badly. But you've got a solution there, which is really a solution to the problem of the worst of the private equity and quite a lot of them are private equity owned companies. But a lot of the listed companies are actually doing fine. I've just said I'm trying to come to mind. There are others that are like, so hang on, why have you got a 10-year plan for everything? I mean, we're not trying to go back to some kind of Soviet way of running utilities. And I think there will be a lot of conversation about that also once you put the costs on it because it sounds 10 years does not speak water down the cost. Admittedly, you could have argued that it spreads the cost of infrastructure upgrade, but it still comes to a big bill. Can you really delay oil and gas decisions to a 10-year plan? I suppose you can set the direction of travel, but what we see happening in the Straits of Hormuz has meant that even you can see a lot of labor voices sort of changing their tune a bit about oil fields and going back to drilling in the North Sea oil fields. So I suppose they were just a couple of examples. Natural England, you took me a bit by surprise on that one. I know there's often a lot of churn and we're thinking about these big quangos. But if I were looking at the greens coming off, me. Also, the getting rid of natural England would be the step that would be first on my agenda unless there's a clear plan to put in something that a lot of conservation-minded people would think, yeah, Labour is not just going to bulldoze most of the parts of England I care about. I think that's a really good point. Public ownership, public control is the language that Andy Burnham often talks about and I think they're trying to work out what their definitions of both are. You mentioned oil and gas. I think the advantage of delay in the oil and gas decision to the autumn is very simply it's colder. I think they looked at the idea of announcing more oil and gas while we were in the middle of a heat wave and decided that that was just impossible politics. So what's the sort of mitigating plan? I wouldn't I would just expect that to go ahead. Should we turn to challenge number two for Andy Burnham? If challenge number one was the telly of plan, challenge number two is the budget. And this is really interesting for me. Now, remember the backdrop? Andy Burnham appears in the past. We've had a real dislike for the Treasury. He didn't enjoy his 2006-7 stint as chief secretary to the Treasury. He's blasted Treasury conventional thinking and interviews in the past. You know, he thought about splitting it up before he became prime minister. So that's all of the backdrop, right? But as I understand it, the signals are that the October 28 budget is going to be, well, for one of the better word, quite orthodox, right? And so for those on the soft left, and you mentioned disappointment of the soft left earlier, those on the soft left who want a sort of radical first budget, well, I think they think that their priority first of all is to reassure the markets because the markets react in badly with beer disaster. So what John Healey do this in the coming weeks. I'm told this is this is just going to be something he does. He's going to go round and he did it last week, and he'll do it again, repeating that the UK has the fastest deficit reduction plan in the G7, which it is, according to the IMF. And I cannot stress enough to all listeners. If John Healey is repeating that, he's committed to it. He's sticking to it. They aren't going to turn on the spending taps. So the first thing that I gleaned is that even if there's a little bit of extra flexibility over boring, under existing physical rules, isn't going to be a lot. They've decided the markets matter and MPs looking to loosen. Well, bad luck. The second thing, is it sounds like they've taken a lot of big spending decisions off the table for this budget. Yes, there's the six billion pound black hole that leads filling after Keir Starmer's defense investment plan, but I can reveal they're not going to try and find the money to fund the rise to three percent or three point five percent of GDP in the budget for the defense budget. That'll come the spending review next year. And they're not going to try and find the money for social care either because Louise Casey's got a report. And that's a year away. So two of the biggest spending issues are going to be deferred. And then thirdly, yes, there will be some tax rises. They won't break the manifesto. It can't be a revenue neutral budget in all likelihood because, you know, you begin underwater. But look at that. Row over bank taxes. Ed Conway was telling us that's a fruitful place to raise some money. Jamie Diamond from JPMorgan has been hitting back. But what about windfall taxes on energy companies profiting from the high prices? So the big unknown treasure will be telling ministers that we just don't know what's happening to prices and inflation. So you need to keep something back for that. But, you know, all in all, this does not feel like a budget that's going to be on the scale of, you know, some of those of recent years. I think that's the likely direction of travel, but I do still think there is a question here about Andy Burnham and the economy and how he's going to position himself. He can simply hand it over to a save pair of hands as you say, do a quite orthodox budget. But let's not forget, you know, sometimes we pass lightly over the fact that this was the Andy Burnham who wants to speak about bond vigilantes who came in hot and heavy about the markets. Now he has retreated from that kind of rhetoric, but I think they say in that great film, the social network, the internet is written in ink and people do remember this. Investors remember this happen to be lots of European investors just over the last few days abroad and there's a little concern about this and they want to know what who is this Andy Burnham person and what kind of global economy does he think that he wants to run on behalf of Britain. So that's an interesting tension as well as the nuts and bolts of the budget that I think he's still maybe, you know, maybe a lot of people say, don't worry about that, it doesn't matter. I think it does and I think at some point he will feel that he's tested on it would be better to have an answer. He's quoted people like Lord O'Neill, Jim O'Neill, we featured on this podcast recently to be more fiscally elastic and inventive while being seen as a very straightforward banker, a kind of labour banker, you know, I mean like, not everybody would say, like, you know, Jim O'Neill's review of finances there, but he's very respected. At the same time, those negotiations with number 10 for him to join more fully in an advisory role, they seem to have stalled a bit Lord O'Neill said to have some, you know, queesiness about the prospect of any idea of wealth tax as being demanded by the PM supporters and his own, you know, what would become his own personal investments in that scenario. So I think you can just sometimes see a bit of tension there about whether Andy Burnham's fundamentally economic outlook is defined by what went before or by something subsequent. This city is also wondering, I think, whether the treasury is back in the driving seat because, yes, John Healy is a very strong cabinet minister, but he's not often thought about as being sort of wildly inventive in terms of his view of finance and the economies talked about bringing things back to Britain, weapon systems, et cetera, to be built here to slightly small P protectionism. Again, you know, how does that fit when you're trying to do bigger deals where you have partnerships and you take a more of a risk load for Great Britain in order to drive us forward on the growth curve. So I think these are the big underlying questions. If they're not answered, I think a lot of people in the Labour world say that's fine by me, like this is kind of an okay budget for me, but I think you might then open up an opportunity for the Conservatives reform as well, but I would say particularly the Conservatives to say this is not enough and where is this growth bazooka that you promised us o Labour party when you came into office no matter who's in charge. I agree. I mean, we could, under my way of telling it, end up at the end of the year with not knowing how they're going to pay for defence, social care and the like and just having too many big questions and I wonder where that leaves us. Just to trot through challenge three, domestic policy, we don't know a huge amount yet. There's a huge list of things left behind by the last government, like send reform. We've already had a bit of a scurvy show for prison releases. I'd make one observation on Andy Burden's style on this. I think he sort of expects everyone else to sort of get on with it and then suddenly pounces, he's a pouncer. And I think Alex Norris that he just has actually found that rather to his surprise and discombobulation with prisoner places. You know, he's sort of like, the Prime Minister is suddenly there present, puts himself at the heart of the policy debate, brings in a whole load of people and you sort of all of a sudden this area that hadn't really been touched or thought about is absolutely at the heart of the debate. And Andy Burden's stylist is trying to get everybody a room and get his hands dirty looking for compromise, compromise, you know, alternative solution, alternative solution. And that's his method. So you can suddenly find yourself at the eye of the storm. And that's his, so we could find a bit, there's a little bit of lurching that might go on on domestic policy this, this, this, what do you think? I love the idea of a pouncer. I would perhaps put in a word for Andy Burden. I'm a Prime Minister, he's thinking, listening to this, which we'd love to think he is. Of course, I can pounce. That's literally my job. But I have the pouncing rights. So if I think something's important of going the wrong way, I can intervene. I can see if you've got a brand new justice secretary, that must have been quite challenging and bruising. It's a bit like, you know, equivalent in our world, if someone very senior, chiming in here in an email, chaining, oh, God, what? Sorry, no. So yeah. It was just not what Keir Starmer ever did. That's the, I think that's what's really fascinating. That was a problem for Keir Starmer. I think we were violently agreeing there. That was a, we clashed in mid-air. That was exactly a problem for Keir Starmer. Nobody knew what he cared about any more than anything else. So I suppose to, to give the Prime Minister some rope on that one, you could say, well, if he comes on in hot and heavy and says, I'm really worried about the way this early releasing is going, he is then using his rights and his heft. I thought I might just swing us quickly towards foreign affairs. Could I do that? Just because this, because it's a bigger world out there and there's an awful lot going on in it. We talked a bit about Ed Miliband and how is that balance of duties with the Prime Minister to get a workout, but they will sort that out. They seem to be have a pretty benign relationship. I do think we aren't going to see quite a big shift on Gaza policy. I think it is just, you know, being, being, being pitch-rolled already that this recognition of Gaza, of course, affected under Keir Starmer, but that that will go further. There will be much stronger language about it. I think in Ed Miliband, actually, under Andy Burnham, you got a recognition that this was seen as an area where a lot of people who are very supportive of the Palestinian cause will have been very turned off by Israel's content there in the Gaza Strip. I think we'll see a lot more what Stammer avoided, which is direct criticism of Israel and for [BLANK_AUDIO] it's already building up now with a very strong international statement on the settlements and declaring that they are illegal and they've written Germany and a number of other countries see some of those settlements, obviously, they're very specified on the map where they are as being a problem and taking that straight back to the government in Israel. So I think that will be quite a big deal. And not to forget, also, you know, this switch, if you've got Edmilla Band coming in saying, I really do believe in tackling climate change. We've had this incredibly hot summer in an awful lot of damage across Europe and beyond. So I think he feels that he's got a moment he can leverage there, but that would not have been what we've heard. You've got Cooper, his predecessor talking about in detail, and that he really wants to put development back on the table. He says it tells you it in the conversation with Edmilla Band, or his team. And of course, that raises that figure, that ghostly figure of the 0.7% of GDP for development and development related causes. And it's, you know, there is a commitment to return to it over time, fiscally, I can't see Edmilla Band creating a headache for John Healy by saying, I'd like this to happen very soon. But again, it will be seen as quite a switch of priority. It certainly is in the foreign office where they're all running around trying to figure out what the new foreign secretary wants fastest and most of. But I think it will feel very different. I think Edmilla Band wants foreign secretary to feel like a big job, because don't forget he thought he would be Chancellor. Somebody said to me actually that Edmilla Band's plans for the first 100 days of Chancellor have now gone in the same draw as the 2007 Gordon Brown election manifesto that Edmilla Band was meant to write. And the first 100 days planned for Edmilla Band as Prime Minister in 2015. And in the draw now, then went the also unused plan to be Chancellor. So he wants to make this into a big deal. And that's where some of the tension actually is. There's a bit of a skirmish. There's an olie write story in the time. It's about whether or not Edmilla Band really has much of a say on Europe policy. Some suggestions that he doesn't. And it's the ambitious Hamish fault there very much in that. Do you want to just have a last word on where you think we are with the EU? I never quite know what a closer relationship looks like beyond this darn scheme for students. But what a real economic deepening of the relationship could mean beyond the kind of automatically taking EU rules that Keir Starmer signed us up to. And it looks like Andy Bennett is going to continue. What do you make of where we are? Well, I think that's exactly the problem isn't I? I mean, I feel like I've spent my life condemned to cover the closeening of ties to Europe, you know, like that arrow in the Greek mythology that never reaches the target. It's always flying through the air. There is that determination to signal to Europe that we are interested in the big reconnection. But does you say you're right? Once you start to get, we actually do have a fairly by Europe standards reasonably open trade deal with with Europe signed in in a hurry after Brexit. There is bits of that that you can improve, you know, around farm up particularly as the American situation in trade gets worse that you could make arguments there that you can just keep tightening those screws, get the farmer deal better, get the stuff my Brussels political colleagues really expert on. So I lean on them a lot in terms of agri products, what cancels are what happens if you put a shrimp is it still a fresh fish or isn't it? You know, there's a lot of that stuff, but it does really affect trade and it does affect tariffs and the more that you can get some liberation from that, particularly for small businesses who've been very frustrated trying to trade with the continent and vice versa. So I can't see that going that I would say I'm not just heinous fault, there is ambitious in this regard, heinous fault is slightly hamstrung because he's partly for an office, but also because he's got this rule with managing relationships with the devolved entities in the UK, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales. He's therefore also very much in the more of the cabinet office and I think that's already beginning to be sort of a little confusing about how, you know, what's the priority of his role? Initially, I think I thought he was going to be the successor to Nick Thomas' sims on the train all the time, the Eurostar going off to talk to Mara Sheffkevic, the trade boss in Europe. And the meantime, I actually think Jonathan Reynolds and trade and business has managed to chime in there and seems to have started some talks himself in treating, going to show that there can be lots of cooks in the European kitchen, but whether we get a full alacol menu back from it, I think it's still very questionable. I think there will also still be a summit, which gives us another pillar for the autumn, which is probably a good point to end it. Lots of pillars, a one which to rest are podcast with. It's fact-filled update for what's coming up in the autumn. Can't wait to start with the five o'clock alarms again on Tuesday. We'll be back there in 4K vision for all of you. See you then. Have a great last few days of recess and we will see you for term time proper. Next week has its challenges, but will be absolutely great to hear from and see and vice versa our audience again because that's just one of the great joys of this podcast. What do airports, bananas and a pair of shoddly-made running trainers from the 1970s have in common? On the surface, not very much, but on my podcast Stuff Matters, I will uncover the deeper stories behind each of them. You will see how together they tell a fascinating new story about the world we live in. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow.