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Can the Conservatives survive Farage squeeze? | Shadow Chancellor interview · The Fourcast

• 0:00
  Are you a Tory till the day you die?
• 0:02
  Oh, absolutely. So you'll never join reform?
• 0:04
  Never, never, ever, ever. We've seen that playbook before.
• 0:08
  We know where it leads. The reformer in government today
• 0:11
  on the economy, they will be a present danger to this country.
• 0:15
  I haven't spoken to a single senior Tory here at the
• 0:18
  conference who thinks that Kemi Vaidnock will still be in her
• 0:21
  job at the general election. Do you have absolute faith that
• 0:25
  she will? Kimi Badenov is our leader.
• 0:27
  If anybody out there thinks that Tory party getting involved in
• 0:31
  another internal election contest is somehow going to
• 0:34
  advance our fortunes, they are deluded.
• 0:37
  Does the Tory Party have a a God-given right to exist?
• 0:44
  Hello and welcome to the forecast.
• 0:46
  We're in Manchester for the Conservative Party conference,
• 0:48
  where the Tories are in turmoil, trailing badly in the polls and
• 0:52
  facing electoral oblivion. With Labour in power and Nigel
• 0:56
  Farage's Reform UK surging ahead, Shadow Chancellor Samel
• 0:59
  Stride joins me to explain how the Conservatives plan to regain
• 1:03
  momentum and rebuild their reputation as the party of
• 1:06
  economic competence. Are they simply an irrelevance?
• 1:10
  Well, Samel, you've been talking about cutting welfare to fund
• 1:13
  this National Insurance rebate to help people buy first homes.
• 1:16
  You're being called Malay Stride after Javier Malay, the chainsaw
• 1:21
  wielding cutter in chief in Argentina.
• 1:24
  Do you like that comparison? I don't think I trust myself
• 1:26
  with a change, a change. I think it might be a terrible
• 1:29
  accident would happen. But look, what what I'm saying
• 1:32
  is that we need to recognize that we are living beyond our
• 1:34
  means as a country. You're seeing that in the size
• 1:37
  of the debt that we're carrying. You're seeing that in the
• 1:39
  servicing costs on that debt at 100 billion a year, twice what
• 1:43
  we spend on defence. Yeah, we've all started under
• 1:46
  your. Well, we did have the small
• 1:47
  matter of COVID and, you know, the contraction of the economy
• 1:51
  that occurred and a lot of money that needed to be spent at that
• 1:53
  time, about 400 billion and Libra and all the other parties
• 1:56
  were urging us that if you remember to go even further than
• 1:59
  we did. So I think there were some
• 2:00
  exceptional circumstances, but the reality remains that we need
• 2:05
  to have a recognition now that if we carry on the way we are,
• 2:09
  the wheels will come off our economy and it will be bad for
• 2:11
  all of us. So what we've been saying in my
• 2:13
  speech today is that we are serious about and making savings
• 2:18
  across government so that we can get the debt down, but also do
• 2:21
  through time things on tax that will help with the economy.
• 2:24
  And I had announcements to make on.
• 2:26
  That too well, and one of the announcements is restricting
• 2:28
  benefits only to British citizens, exactly the same
• 2:31
  policy as reform. The difference between US and
• 2:34
  reform is that we have thought very carefully through the
• 2:37
  measures that we're putting forward.
• 2:40
  Reform, for example, have said that they will take everybody up
• 2:43
  to £20,000 out of income tax altogether.
• 2:46
  That comes with a price tag, according to the IFS, of up to
• 2:49
  £80 billion, but half what we spend on the NHS every year with
• 2:53
  it's one and a half million employees.
• 2:55
  They have not explained to any degree how they will fund that
• 3:00
  or any plan to actually deliver on it.
• 3:02
  They are fantasy economists and what we're talking about is well
• 3:06
  thought through savings that we can deliver.
• 3:09
  Well is it well thought through though, because some of your
• 3:11
  sums look a little bit sketchy. EU citizens with settled status
• 3:15
  have to access benefits because of the withdrawal agreement, so
• 3:18
  that takes quite a big chunk out of the potential.
• 3:20
  So they're not in our calculation.
• 3:22
  Exactly. They're not, but you know a lot
• 3:24
  of your, well, some of your front bench colleagues are
• 3:26
  saying, colleagues are saying unpick that withdrawal
• 3:28
  agreement. Is that on the agenda?
• 3:30
  Should that be looked at? As things stand, there is a a
• 3:33
  treaty arrangement with the European Union.
• 3:37
  We are not speaking about going in and trying to renegotiate.
• 3:40
  You say, as things stand, well, you.
• 3:42
  Could in the future pick that, well, I'm not going to predict
• 3:44
  what happens in the future. I mean, we're not saying, well,
• 3:46
  they may well, well they may do and that's fine.
• 3:48
  They're you know, that's fine for them to express their to
• 3:52
  flare. Views.
• 3:53
  Well, that's. Fine.
• 3:54
  And people, well, people will have.
• 3:56
  No, I didn't say that. What I said was that we have a
• 3:58
  treaty arrangement with Europe and that treaty stands, and
• 4:01
  that's why we have excluded EU nationals from that particular
• 4:05
  change. Just just again on the sums, you
• 4:08
  know, you didn't back the government's own welfare cuts of
• 4:10
  five and a half billion pounds. That was just political
• 4:13
  opportunity. That was to.
• 4:14
  Propose that one. No, not at all.
• 4:16
  Because if you remember how that came about was that Rachel
• 4:19
  Reeves was approaching the spring statement, discovered
• 4:22
  from the OBR suddenly that all the headroom disappeared again
• 4:27
  second time round and needed to find some money and shouted over
• 4:31
  to DWP, find me 5 billion plus, actually shouted over twice
• 4:35
  because they came back with one lot.
• 4:36
  And then she found it wasn't quite enough on the revised OBR
• 4:39
  figures. That's not a way to drive
• 4:41
  welfare reform by being sort of pulled along by the fiscal rules
• 4:46
  and so on. And that's why it wasn't
• 4:48
  principled and it wasn't the right thing to have done and we
• 4:50
  opposed. Even so, you're talking about,
• 4:52
  you know, having worked out all your figures, Therefore you're
• 4:55
  more responsible in reform, more responsible from Labour, more
• 4:59
  responsible than Labour in their last set of cuts.
• 5:01
  But saving £8 billion from cutting civil servants 3 1/2
• 5:05
  billion pounds by axing asylum hotels, You could have done both
• 5:08
  of those things in government. The costs of those two policies
• 5:11
  ballooned while you were in government.
• 5:13
  So civil servants in particular, the numbers bloomed because we
• 5:17
  had the Brexit and we also had COVID.
• 5:21
  You push through, I mean, which we had COVID, yeah, so the
• 5:23
  numbers went up. But you're quite right.
• 5:25
  We are under new leadership now and we recognise that we do not
• 5:29
  need that number of civil servants.
• 5:31
  And mistakes were made under your.
• 5:32
  On your we, we, we did great things when we were in
• 5:35
  government and we made mistakes like all the governments do.
• 5:37
  But the reality is to get back that number, which is a 25% cut
• 5:42
  to where it was in 2016, given we don't now have those
• 5:45
  particular pressure and we got things like AI and productivity
• 5:48
  driving technology that is eminently achievable and we will
• 5:52
  do that over a period of five years after the next election if
• 5:55
  we're elected. You're trying to find the middle
• 5:57
  ground of British politics, you know you've got reform on one
• 5:59
  end, you've got Labour in power, you're trying to sort of find
• 6:02
  this middle Rd. Does it exist though?
• 6:04
  Does the centre not hold anymore?
• 6:06
  Liberal minded Tories going to just go and vote Lib Dem next
• 6:10
  time. Well, well, it's interesting
• 6:11
  that you can't characterize reform as being to the right.
• 6:15
  I would say they're marching to the left.
• 6:17
  They are in some. Ways and not in others.
• 6:19
  No, they they want the National. Economically to the left,
• 6:21
  socially to the right. Well, there we are.
• 6:23
  If your premises are economically to the left, in my
• 6:25
  terms as the shadow Chancellor, they are to the left.
• 6:27
  So they want to nationalise things and utilities.
• 6:30
  They want to abolish the two child benefit cap.
• 6:34
  That means spending more on welfare, not less.
• 6:37
  An extra 3 1/2 billion pounds a year.
• 6:40
  Those are the kind of policies, well, frankly, actually, of a
• 6:43
  party that will just go out and say what it thinks the various
• 6:45
  people it's talking to want them to say.
• 6:48
  Well, that's probably if. It's true.
• 6:49
  Vote for you. That's my point.
• 6:50
  I mean, you had John Curtis the pollster saying that as things
• 6:52
  stand at the moment more the Lib Dems would win more seats than
• 6:56
  you. So you know, Liberal Tories will
• 6:58
  just go well. Let's get them to that.
• 6:59
  We can't be led by where the polls are today as to what we do
• 7:03
  as to what we do for an election that will probably be in four
• 7:06
  years time. What we've got to do is hold our
• 7:09
  nerves, stay true due to our conservative principles, set out
• 7:13
  policies when it's right to do so and when we've done the
• 7:15
  thinking, we've done that at this conference.
• 7:17
  One of the things that I don't think anybody will be able to
• 7:20
  leave this this conference and say is we don't know what the
• 7:23
  Conservatives stand for on borders.
• 7:25
  We've been very clear on the ECHR, Big bold move.
• 7:28
  We thought about it carefully. We had Lord Walsam do all that
• 7:32
  work. And on the economy, the things
• 7:33
  that I've been saying this morning about living within our
• 7:36
  means, but also showing that whilst a lot of that money needs
• 7:39
  to go to bearing down on the debt, we can, if we do this,
• 7:43
  make the savings actually get some taxes down that will get
• 7:47
  the economy going. Does the Tory party have a
• 7:49
  God-given right to exist? Or when it comes to the next
• 7:53
  election, if Reform end up the biggest party, do you have to
• 7:56
  just throw in your lot with them?
• 7:58
  Well, all these hypotheticals about four years time.
• 8:00
  Look, the the big thing about politics today is uncertainty.
• 8:04
  If you were interviewing me in 2019 and I were a socialist,
• 8:08
  Cathy, you'd be saying you've just had the worst results since
• 8:10
  the 1930s. You're going to be out of power
• 8:12
  for a generation, aren't you? So.
• 8:14
  It's all to. Play for and yeah, and yet the
• 8:16
  Labour Party get one of the largest landslides in British
• 8:18
  political history. The same thing you could say of
• 8:21
  the Canadian election with Pierre Poliev 23 points up came
• 8:25
  to the election. He not only lost it, he lost his
• 8:27
  own seat. These things.
• 8:29
  Will move. Around you as a person, you
• 8:31
  know, there's been quite we'll come to this in a second with
• 8:33
  quite a few facts about male stride that have been floating
• 8:35
  around this conference. Are you a Tory till the day you
• 8:38
  die? Oh, absolutely.
• 8:40
  I'm a conservative. Never, never, ever, ever.
• 8:43
  Right. And do you think that holds for
• 8:45
  a large number of conservatives that whatever happens in the
• 8:47
  next election, you are going to remain as a force?
• 8:51
  Well, yeah, absolutely. And and what you're saying at
• 8:53
  this conference is setting up serious, well thought through
• 8:58
  policies that have grown up because we're not sometimes just
• 9:01
  saying the easy things. I said a lot of things that
• 9:04
  you're rightly challenging me on and saying, well, you know, can
• 9:07
  you really afford this and can you really say that?
• 9:09
  And all that sounds a bit, you know, these are the things that
• 9:12
  serious grown up politicians have to do.
• 9:14
  And we're demonstrating now right here in Manchester that we
• 9:17
  are up for government. We are doing the hard yards, the
• 9:20
  hard thinking and we're going to take the serious trouble.
• 9:22
  So what do you say to colleagues who are thinking about defecting
• 9:24
  to reform? There's quite a lot of them.
• 9:27
  Well, I don't know who's thinking of doing that that or
• 9:29
  not, but I would say, I would say if it's on the basis that
• 9:33
  you think that it's a foregone conclusion that you know the
• 9:36
  outcome of a general election in four years time, then if that's
• 9:41
  the basis on which you're moving, I I would be thinking
• 9:43
  again, nobody knows. Absolutely not.
• 9:46
  Be part of a merged Tory reform. Party I see no common ground on,
• 9:51
  for example, the economy between US and reform.
• 9:56
  I see a party that is fiscally irresponsible, that is going to
• 9:59
  go, is going out there and promising all sorts of giveaways
• 10:03
  without properly looking at how that'll be funded.
• 10:05
  We've seen that playbook before. We know where it leads and if
• 10:09
  reformer in government today on the economy, they would be a
• 10:13
  present danger to this country. So why would I want to get?
• 10:16
  Involved, right? So you have.
• 10:18
  Why would you? Rule out being part of a merged.
• 10:20
  Party before I am, Yes, yes, I am not going to be predicting.
• 10:24
  You know you're drawing into all these hypotheticals.
• 10:25
  As. Interviewers love to do.
• 10:27
  It's the great sport, isn't it? But what I'm saying is I'm not
• 10:30
  going to get into hypotheticals in the future, but there is no
• 10:34
  I'm not. No, I, I'm, no, I am not up for
• 10:39
  a merger with Reform. I'm not up for joining Reform
• 10:43
  and I don't think I could make that much clearer.
• 10:44
  Yeah, OK. You've had welfare cuts, mass
• 10:47
  deportations, withdrawing from the ECHR, you've even announced
• 10:51
  in a policy a policy today abolishing business rates for
• 10:54
  High Street businesses. Whatever happened to waiting
• 10:56
  until 2027 for policies? Isn't that extraordinary?
• 11:00
  You should ask me that. When?
• 11:01
  About a month ago, before the conference, you'd be saying,
• 11:04
  what on earth do you stand for? Where are your policies?
• 11:06
  Well, now we're coming out with them.
• 11:08
  You're now saying, well, why didn't you wait?
• 11:09
  Yeah, but you know you. Can't win?
• 11:11
  You've panicked. You can't win.
• 11:12
  No, you've. Got desperate.
• 11:13
  You've looked at the polls, you say.
• 11:14
  You look at the polls. What you do?
• 11:15
  Not at all, not at all. What we are doing, we've said
• 11:18
  this from the start, is doing the deep thinking around the
• 11:21
  challenges our country faces and coming up with the right
• 11:24
  policies. And as we come up with those
• 11:26
  policies, we will put those policies out there.
• 11:29
  So I have set out, yeah, you were gonna, I've set out, I've
• 11:32
  set out a series of savings totaling £47 billion.
• 11:37
  It's a large amount of money. And what I'm saying is the
• 11:39
  majority of that must go to paying down debt, but that
• 11:43
  leaves some to do other things. And what we've sent today is a
• 11:45
  very clear signal that we are pro business.
• 11:48
  We understand that we need to free businesses up to drive
• 11:51
  growth. We are reaching out to young
• 11:53
  people. So the National Insurance first
• 11:56
  job bonus that I announced today is very much a clear message to
• 12:00
  younger generations that we are, we are on their side.
• 12:03
  When they go out and do the right thing, when they're
• 12:05
  aspirational, work hard, we will be there right behind.
• 12:09
  I haven't spoken to a single senior Tory here at the
• 12:11
  conference who thinks that Kemi Baedenock will still be in her
• 12:14
  job at the general election. Do you have absolute faith that
• 12:18
  she will? Kemi Baedenock is our leader.
• 12:21
  She has a very clear vision. She has a very clear vision for
• 12:25
  the Conservative Party. She is somebody who will hold
• 12:28
  her nerve. She's somebody who's extremely
• 12:31
  resilient. This is one of the things that
• 12:33
  people too often dismiss or don't even think about.
• 12:36
  She's doing the hardest job in British politics.
• 12:39
  Mine's a pretty hard job, hers is a much harder job and she's
• 12:42
  doing it in a very calm, measured way.
• 12:45
  If anybody out there thinks that the Tory party getting involved
• 12:50
  in another internal election contest is somehow going to
• 12:53
  advance our fortunes, they are deluded.
• 12:56
  Well, just so she is going to be our leader in my my view, right
• 13:00
  the way through to the general election.
• 13:01
  And as I say, I think there's all to play for.
• 13:04
  Look, you mentioned Reform, 31% are they know to you're you're
• 13:07
  not. Yeah, where was the SDP back in
• 13:10
  19? 81 to SDP.
• 13:12
  Of no, but I do think the SDPI know we're at over 50% in the
• 13:16
  polls. In the 83 election they got
• 13:18
  about 20 odd seats. Just finally.
• 13:20
  Things can change. You've absolutely, categorically
• 13:22
  assured us that Kenny Badenoch will still be in post, but up to
• 13:25
  the general election. But there's a little list doing
• 13:28
  the rounds on WhatsApp about 10 things you didn't know about Mel
• 13:30
  Stride. You're a licensed pilot, a scuba
• 13:32
  diver, a Stonehenge qualified tour guide.
• 13:35
  You've penned an unpublished novel set in the 60s US music
• 13:38
  scene. I mean, you've got quite a hint
• 13:40
  to land. I wonder whether that's that
• 13:42
  list is doing the rounds because you quite fancy, although you
• 13:44
  crashed out in the last leadership contest.
• 13:47
  If there's a sort of need for an eminence grease, I mean not very
• 13:50
  great, but a bit grease. You know sperm.
• 13:53
  Hand on the tiller to step in to just tide you over to the next
• 13:56
  general election. You'd be there.
• 13:57
  I am there putting my shoulder to the wheel, supporting Kemi,
• 14:02
  working with the shadow cabinet to get another Conservative
• 14:05
  government and you know, if people are interested in my wild
• 14:09
  swimming or novels that weren't published or flying aeroplanes.
• 14:11
  I mentioned wild. Swimming.
• 14:13
  Yeah, great. The wild swimming or whatever
• 14:14
  else is out there, then great. You know, I think people should
• 14:17
  know something about their politicians.
• 14:19
  And, you know, hopefully it's brightened a few lives, you
• 14:23
  know, knowing that I do all those.
• 14:24
  Smells great. Thank you very much for joining
• 14:27
  us. That is it from the forecast.
• 14:28
  Thank you very much for watching Back Soon.