Culture
New podcast: Quite right! with Michael Gove & Madeline Grant
In the inaugural episode of 'Quite Right', Michael Gove and Madeline Grant delve into the latest political reshuffles within the Labour Party, exploring the implications of key ministerial c...
New podcast: Quite right! with Michael Gove & Madeline Grant
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Interactive Transcript
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Hello, I'm Michael Gove. And I'm Madeline Grant.
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Apologies for interrupting the smooth running of this fantastic spectator podcast.
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But we want to tell you about our new podcast, Quite Right, which is Out To Know.
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It's a place for politics, culture and philosophy, with perspectives you won't hear anywhere else.
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Our second episode is Out To Know, in which we talk about Labour's deputy drama,
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discuss for the Britain is sliding into a revolutionary mood out of France.
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And investigate the claim in a new book that Margaret Thatcher was autistic.
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We can share a sneak peek of our new episode here.
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If you like what you hear, search Quite Right wherever you are listening to this podcast.
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Or find us on YouTube at Spectator TV. That's Quite Right from the Spectator. Happy listening.
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This time last week, you and I were talking about the reshuffle, Labour's reshuffle,
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which at that point had been mostly the elevation of Darren Jones to be a kind of a groom of the stool figure to the Prime Minister.
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And a few behind the scenes sort of back off is people that frankly most people,
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other than the keenest political junkie, wouldn't have heard of them.
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So we were rather underwhelmed. But since then, I think it's fair to say that we have seen a total reshuffle
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involving scores of ministers, including two of the great offices of state,
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if that Cooper has moved from the Home Office to the Foreign Office,
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and Shabbana Mahmoud has been shuffled from justice into the all-important brief of the Home Office.
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What has been your reading of this so far? Is it a consolidation of power or a sign of weakness?
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Well, you were absolutely right last week. It was small earthquake in Downing Street, not many dead,
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at the beginning of the week. But then you had the volcanic ejection of Angela Reiner,
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the hands of the adviser of Minister of Standards, Sir Laurie Magnus,
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who is the most powerful baronette in the country, and who brought the ex down on Angela's career.
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And that triggered your absolutely right, a far more fundamental reshuffle.
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And I think the most striking thing about it was the elevation of Shabbana Mahmoud to the Home Office,
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not just because of what it says about her abilities and how highly she's rated,
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but also what it says about Labour's deepest fear, because reshuffles can reveal many things,
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but actually they are sort of barium meals or X-rays that expose where a government thinks it's weak.
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So it's clearly the case that the government think that on migration and crime,
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they are really vulnerable and vulnerable to reform.
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I myself have been a victim of a reshuffle, where I'm actually several.
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More than one.
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So when I was sacked as Education Secretary, that was because David Cameron
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and Linton Crosby, the Australian political strategist, who was advising him.
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What are you weak?
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The week-week.
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Well, they thought that everything that I was doing was too toxic.
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This was an area weakness. The problem had to be resolved.
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They had to find someone who was much more approachable, and they did.
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I mean, it's not hard to find someone more approachable.
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If I'm misremembered.
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It was Nikki.
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Yeah.
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And in this case, it's almost the opposite of that.
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So I don't think it's any disrespect to Evet Cooper, that Shabana is seen within Labour circles
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as someone who is an uncompromising tuffy.
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And that's the reason why she's been elevated.
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There are other aspects to the reshuffle, which are significant,
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but I think that her elevation is at the heart of it.
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The common consensus is that Shabana Mammud is a competent minister.
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She's made the best, I think, it's fair to say, of justice, which, as you know, can be a very tricky brief.
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It has some of the thorny aspects of the home office shoved into the old post of the Lord Chancellor.
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And yet, she seems to have made just about the best of that that could be expected at the time.
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There's also now going to be an interesting race, I think, with what happens to the deputy prime minister.
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This is a job that almost takes on a sort of totemic significance within Labour.
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It's a quite an outward-facing job involving, you know, dealing with the party faithful and keeping everyone happy.
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And often tends to go to a, what kind of Angela Rainer-like figure who commands respect within the party
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and sort of keeps the troops happy?
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I wonder if the selection they make there is going to be significant in terms of, you know,
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what does it say about the heart of the Labour Party, the soul of the Labour Party?
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You're absolutely right, the Shabbana Mahmoud did a good job in the Ministry of Justice.
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It's a very difficult one for the reasons that you mentioned.
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One of the first things that she had to do was to preside over the early release of prisoners.
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She managed very effectively to lay the blame on the preceding Tory administration.
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And she also got cover for some of the changes that she wanted to make by appointing a former Tory Lord Chancellor,
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David Gork, to look into sentencing review.
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And more than that, once you got into difficulty when the sentencing council,
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which is a sort of judge-led body responsible for deciding on some of these questions,
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made a series of recommendations that looked as though they were to go and phrase,
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to-toe justice, she said, we're not having that.
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I, the politician, the elected politician, I'm going to overrule you, the unelected judges.
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And that was very sort of blue Labour reform adjacent on brand positioning.
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And I think it's that a guyle and toughness, allied to a work ethic,
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and the fact that she's trusted by all my people at the heart of Downing Street that helped her.
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Now, one might think, giving all of these in Comeia, that she should be the deputy leader of the Labour Party.
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And I certainly think Labour would be in a better position if that were so.
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But you're absolutely right also.
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The choice of deputy leader has to be a complement to the leader.
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So it's a bit like when you had Frank Boff and Selena Scott,
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or indeed Ed Boer's and Kate Garroway now on the morning television sofa.
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You have the-
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It's always a beautiful woman and a, let's say-
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But quite. That's the thing.
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It's always the grizzled male and then the glamour-puss-
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Well, he will be.
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Possessly.
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Yeah, yeah.
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That is the way in which Labour-
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So we're going for daytime TV vibes within the Labour Party?
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Precisely.
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So even though it's not supposed to be the progressive movement of politics,
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it tends to choose its leader and deputy leader on that basis.
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Now, obviously, when you had Tony Blair and John Prescott,
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it was a slightly different vibe, but even there, it was a sort of reverse jives and muster.
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It was the tough and the working class figure.
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Here, Keir Starmer is looking for someone to act as that compliment and fall.
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That's why he's keen on Bridget Phillipson.
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Is he? He's personally keen on Bridget Phillipson to do that job.
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Yes.
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And would she continue to do it, though, her education secretary brief on top of that?
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She absolutely would.
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So I think for most listeners, something for me, Bridget Phillipson has been a terrible
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and terrible situation.
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Obviously.
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But within the Labour movement, Bridget Phillipson is incredibly popular
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because slapping VAT on private school fees-
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absolutely adore it.
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And the fact that she's also gone into BAT to try to dismantle hated Tory reforms
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means that she's really liked by the grassroots.
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And the unions, I guess.
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Absolutely.
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Loved by the unions.
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And she is therefore in a strong position while in the cabinet to play the role of
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someone who can horse whisper the soft left.
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And also be a team player.
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And I think it's no secret that Bridget Phillipson has a long-term ambition
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to be Labour's leader.
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And that's one of the reasons.
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It's not the only one.
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Why she's positioned herself in this way.
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So she is, as it were, the inside the cabinet candidate,
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the outside the cabinet candidates at the moment include Bell Ribiero Adi,
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who's a radical left London MP, and Emily Thormbry, my candidate.
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Me too.
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She's such a joy to sketch.
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Well, this is the only thing I care about ultimately.
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I love her voice.
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She's got a lovely soft kind of, it's both, it's quite deep because I think she's quite a heavy smoker.
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But it has worked out really well for her.
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It's a tightly camp voice.
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I'm a big fan of it.
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It's a voice that has been marinated in gin and tonic and silk cart.
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And...
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Like a buffalo on super kings.
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And for Emily Thormbry,
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it would be a form of sweet revenge because she had been the shadow attorney general.
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She had served in a variety of different shadow cabinets,
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including being Jeremy Corbyn's shadow foreign secretary.
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And she was due to be at the very least in government, if not in cabinet,
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after the election.
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And Keir Starmer dumped her, like an embarrassing girlfriend
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you didn't want to be seen in public with anymore.
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While keeping on some seriously incompetent and unimpressive people within the cabinet,
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it hurt demotion or sacking.
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It stuck out like a sore thumb because he didn't really do that to many other people.
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It was a bit like, you know, in the Simpsons when they have the No Homeers Club,
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it was like, we'll have the No Emily Thormbry's Club.
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Completely.
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Well, it was a form of school year bullying, singling her out as the only person
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who'd been in the shadow cabinet for whom there was no space in government.
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And so it would be sweet revenge.
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And again, I can't help myself liking Emily Thormbry.
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She's personally engaging, so obviously ideologically very strongly on the left.
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But she's no fool.
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And she was a successful lawyer before entering parliament.
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And she's smart and articulate and quick on her feet.
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The one thing that counts against her, perhaps, in Labour eyes,
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is that she is another London lawyer.
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London MP. Yes, exactly.
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And not just any old London lawyer, I mean, from a very nearby constituency.
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I remember this was being a problem during the Jeremy Corbyn days
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because so many of his in a circle were not just in London,
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neighbouring constituencies.
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It was even the same patch of North London.
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And this is again one of the features of the Labour Constitution
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and the way in which Labour operates.
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It's not just that there needs to be this daytime combo of grizzled man
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and female compliment.
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It is also the case that they have to try to mix things in terms of geography
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and class background as well.
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Emily Thormbry's background is not as posh as it might seem.
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She grew up in not in straightened circumstances, but in...
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On a council estate.
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Yes, exactly.
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And she's Lady Newji because she's married to a...
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A high-porked woman.
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Yes, yes.
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And because she's in his LinkedIn,
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because she's got this wonderfully deep smokey voice.
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A friend said to me that she's almost like a working class person's idea
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of what a middle class person exemplifies.
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So that may be a bit of baggage for her,
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but the same way in which stereotypes operate on the right and in our media,
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they operate within the Labour Party as well.
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And again, the progressive party,
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which should be able to transcend the whole question of people's background
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and be interested in merit and the quality of opportunity overall,
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and it should be colour and gender blind, one would think,
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is actually driven with and obsessed with these questions.
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And we saw that in Angela Reiner's own rise and downfall,
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because as you pointed out,
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the way in which Keir Starmer wrote to her,
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marked her departure from government,
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was as much, if not more,
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about her personal story as her political achievements.
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And he hand-wrote it as well,
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which seems to be an honour that is not usually bestowed on a departing minister.
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Incidentally, he's got really weird handwriting.
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Did you see it? It's like bar bar or something.
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Very like wiggly child's writing.
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I saw that actually the handwriting was analysed inevitably in the Sunday papers,
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and perhaps unsurprisingly,
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this is the handwriting someone who's practised in deceit.
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I felt it before.
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I love it when they get these people all, like the body language experts.
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I wish I'd been a body language expert. It's such easy money.
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So, it looks to me like they're about to get a divorce.
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Well, it's certainly the case that the sundering of Angela and Keir,
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there was a third person in the marriage in this case, Laurie Magnus,
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the sundering of Angela and Keir has become sort of fuel,
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not just for the personal drama, but for the claustroner within Labour.
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And again, it's one of the things which I think should be,
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in some respects, a relic of the past, but isn't.
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And I think it's also used somehow as a shield.
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So, there have been lots of commentators on the progressive left,
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who've said that Angela Rainer was explicitly targeted,
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because she was a working class woman who could connect with those voters
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in particular whom reform is targeting,
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and whom we on the right were presumed to regard as
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our new recruits in Angela could woo them back.
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But actually, if you listen to a lot of that stuff,
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it is absolutely drenched in patronising nonsense.
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It often comes from, I noticed, it's very middle class people themselves
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who insist that Angela Rainer is this great earthy voice of the people.
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Yes.
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But I'm not convinced that everyone in Britain shares that view.
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I think she's actually a very polarising figure.
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And I noticed that some of the defences made of Angela Rainer
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by people within the Labour Party were themselves pretty patronising.
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Andie Burnham, basically, saying that it's because she's working class
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and she has an accent, and no one could deal with anyone who,
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in Westminster, has any kind of regional accent.
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Lucy Powell told the comments that Lucy Powell is the recently sacked former leader
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of the commons, and she told Parliament in business questions that the reason
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that people, the Nassie Tories, didn't like Angela Rainer was
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because she was so bloody good at her job and all this kind of thing.
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It seems to me that that is its own special dispensation for behaviour
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that had it been a Nauti Tory doing it would have got universal condemnation.
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Exactly.
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And it is as though Angela Rainer was being treated by others in the Labour Party,
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but more particularly by media figures on the left,
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as some sort of noble savage or noble travert.
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The idea that she was there, they're working class fashion plate as it were.
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And I...
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Yeah, we caught one alive, guys.
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Yeah.
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It infuriates me.
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So Angela Rainer's record in politics should be the means by which her career is judged.
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You or I might find aspects of her personal story inspiring in terms of how she transcended
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disadvantage to get where she is, but once your politician, once in particular,
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you're in government...
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And Minister, yes.
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What should count is, is your employment rights legislation actually going to help people
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from a background similar to your own and who are striving to get the first foot on the
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the ladder of employment, the employment rights bill actually makes it more difficult
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and more expensive to hire young people and to ensure that people get that employment
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opportunity.
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And also, on housing, is it the case that the steps that you're taking will make it easier
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for other people to get on the housing ladder, even as you're buying your £800,000 beach
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side flat in Hove?
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And on the first, the employment rights bill, I think it was, you know, how much it may be
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faded by the trade unions, harmful on housing, I think the record is more mixed because I do
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think that even though new housing numbers are falling at the moment, Angela Rainer was
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taking some necessary steps in order to improve the planning system.
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And it just, as I say, irritates me that the allergies and the funeral relations over
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her career, so far, actually make them back, of course, were all about, you know, the fetishization
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of her class origins and not what she achieved or did in the achieving government.
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It's striking to me that, as you say, that went without, without comment.
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There were, I think, a few echoes of when Rachel Reeves, right before the budget that raised taxes
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on business and meant that many businesses have now stopped hiring and started laying people
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off, was expecting everyone to applaud her for being the first female chancellor.
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I felt that when, for example, Harriet Harmon was insisting in the last couple of days that we need
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to have, Labour needs to have a female deputy leader.
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This is a kind of identity politics conversation that actually feels rather frivolous, quite decadent
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for the time in which we're living where people overwhelmingly feel that things are getting worse
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and that they have less spending money.
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Exactly. And that is the, I fear, one of the big revelations, perhaps it's merely a sort of confirmation
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in the eyes of many, about Labour in government, which most not all of the elements of this
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re-shovel reinforce, which is that it's a identitarian box-ticking, which matters more in government
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than delivery and enterprise.
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You know, the difficulty overall is that Labour itself and its allies more broadly have looked
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at the composition of government, the people who've left, the people who are rising, the people
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who may be deputy leader through the lens of, are they working class?
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Are they Northern? Is this a breaking of the glass ceiling?
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Isn't it great that the three great offices of state foreign secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer
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and Home Secretary and are held by women, rather than orienting the conversation towards delivery
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and what are we doing in order to ensure more houses are built, more people are employed,
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more businesses are generating wealth?
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And it's on that basis, the voters, whether they're working class women in Sunderland
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or hedge funders in May for ergonomic judgement about this government.