13 min listen
The government seems to have appointed another party-political advisor to the civil service – this time Labour Together’s Jess Sargeant to the role of deputy director at the Cabinet Office’s Propriety and Constitution Group. Is the Labour party just as prone to a bit of cronyism as they accuse the Tories of having been? Cindy Yu talks to James Heale and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Cindy Yu.
12 min listen
Keir Starmer has been meeting the new First Minister Eluned Morgan as part of a two day trip to Wales. While the trip included a visit to a wind farm, Starmer quickly faced questions about the fate of steel workers in Port Talbot. What does this challenge tell us about Starmer’s Industrial Strategy and his relationship with the devolved nations? Could Welsh Labour soon face the same anti-incumbency threat that the Conservatives and the SNP faced? James Heale is joined by Tom Baldwin, Starmer’s biographer, and Ruth Mosalski, political editor at WalesOnline. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
15 min listen
The fallout from the riots continues as the numbers being processed by the justice system have led to emergency measures being triggered by the government. What does this mean and, given the prison system was at breaking point even before the riots, what happens next? Also on the podcast, the six Tory leadership contenders have found something they all agree on: opposition to Labour’s proposed change to winter fuel allowance. What does this tell us about future political battles? James Heale and Isabel Hardman join Cindy Yu to discuss. As Cindy mentions in the episode, the journalist Chris Atkins – who was jailed for five years for tax offences –
It seems that bad headlines run in Sue Gray’s family. After a week of newspaper reports suggesting that Keir Starmer’s chief of staff is to blame for the government’s ails, now it is the turn of her son to face the wrath of Fleet Street. Liam Conlon, who was elected last month as the MP for Beckenham and Penge, has quickly been earmarked as one to watch. Within days of his election, he was appointed as a parliamentary private secretary at the Department for Transport. Talk about a rapid rise: perhaps he knows someone at the top? Unfortunately for Conlon, his new appointment has landed him in a spot of
21 min listen
Labour is planning to reform the civil service into five ‘missions’ that will lead the agenda, moving away from the purely departmental way of arranging priorities at the moment. Cindy Yu talks to James Heale and Jill Rutter from the Institute for Government and UK In a Changing Europe (and a former civil servant) about what these plans really mean. Produced by Cindy Yu.
11 min listen
Less than 48 hours after Transport Secretary Louise Haigh hailed a new deal with train drivers… the rail union Aslef announced further strike action. So what happened to Labour’s ‘relationship reset’ with the unions? And with recent pay deals, what incentive is there for workers to compromise with the government? Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman join James Heale to discuss. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
Labour backbenchers have spent years dreaming of the day they are in power and get ‘the call’ from the Prime Minister, inviting them to become ministers. But this time, a few were surprised that when the call came they heard the cut-glass accent of Sue Gray on the line. Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised them. Her power over the government is hardly a secret: she helped run the country as a civil servant during the Tory years. Now she does so as a political adviser. Why disguise it? Sunak told the electorate to judge him on how well he fulfilled his five missions. In the end, they did Gray is
14 min listen
Elon Musk has it in for the Labour government, his latest tweet screenshotting a racist comment Labour MP Lauren Edwards made over a decade ago. On this episode, Lucy Dunn talks to Katy Balls and John McTernan about whether Big Tech can be regulated, and how DSIT Secretary Peter Kyle thinks the government should treat tech tycoons. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Cindy Yu.
During the election campaign, Keir Starmer confessed to taking Friday nights off. ‘I’ve been doing this for years – I will not do a work-related thing after six o’clock, pretty well come what may,’ he told a radio host. But one month into his premiership, and the Prime Minister is struggling even to take his pre-planned summer holiday. Claims that Labour’s decisive victory would make the UK a pocket of stability in a polarised world now look hubristic. Starmer leads a country that others such as Australia and Malaysia are warning their citizens not to travel to. Meanwhile he is engulfed in a very public Twitter spat with tech billionaire
17 min listen
Courts have started giving out severe sentences to those involved in the riots today, but there is a continued clamouring for Keir Starmer to do more. The next step seems to be cracking down on discussions online, where social media platforms such as X and Telegram could be inflaming the riots. Could the government give in to this pressure, and what do we, as a society, lose if so? Cindy Yu talks to Katy Balls and non-affiliated peer Claire Fox. Produced by Cindy Yu.
40 min listen
Women with Balls will be back in the Autumn with a new series. Until then, here’s an episode from the archives, with the new Chancellor Rachel Reeves. On the podcast, she talks to Katy about being a teen chess champion, going to a school where her mum worked and what Labour needed to do to turn its losing streak.
While working as a callow speechwriter for the Labour party in the mid-1980s, I suggested to a member of the then shadow cabinet that perhaps we should do something in support of the teachers, who were clamouring for more money. ‘Sod them, they’re all Tories,’ came the response. Well, how times change – and also how little. This supposedly marginal land is in danger of disappearing, and with it the wildlife that abounds These days there are just nine teachers in the country who vote Conservative and they keep their heads down in case a colleague dobs them in for the hate crime of existing. However, the principle of helping
Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt entered Downing Street with one mission: to clean up the public finances after Liz Truss’s mini-Budget debacle. They posed as the fiscally credible option. All bills would need to be covered, even if the tax burden had to rise. If the Tories were to lose power for being disciplined and truthful, then so be it. Reeves would like to pin any rise on the Conservatives: an extension of ‘Tory austerity’ rather than her own Rachel Reeves has sought to demolish their responsible reputation in her first weeks as Chancellor by announcing that she has discovered a £21.9 billion ‘black hole’ in the public finances this
Before migrating to Wiltshire where I will be for August, I had a friendly dinner with a clutch of Conservative aficionados. Inevitably the conversation turned to the leadership contest and, having disposed of the poison pill, Suella Braverman, they asked me which candidate, as a Labour person, I would fear most. This was quite a challenging question. James Cleverly is clearly a nice chap but his fondness for blokeish chat may prove career-shortening. Robert Jenrick’s views seem to depend on who he is talking to. Ditto the vanilla Tom Tugendhat. Mel Stride is inoffensive and otherwise undefinable. I doubt Priti Patel’s appeal will reach beyond a segment of her party.
13 min listen
Rioters in Southport have clashed with police after three young girls were fatally stabbed outside a Taylor Swift themed dance class on Monday. The crowd was heard chanting ‘English til I die’ in the violence, which took place outside a mosque. The police have confirmed a 17 year old was arrested over the attack, and he was born in Wales. Is this quickly becoming a major test for the new Prime Minister? What sort of political tensions are becoming apparent following the incident? What role has social media played in spreading disinformation? Megan McElroy speaks to Katy Balls and Paul Brand, UK Editor of ITV News, who has been reporting
-18 min listen
Rachel Reeves wakes to mixed headlines today after she announced a range of spending cuts to part fill a £22 billion ‘shortfall’ in public spending for this year alone. The most controversial move by Reeves on Monday was her decision to axe the winter fuel benefit for pensioners not eligible for benefits. That saves £1.5 billion but has already been blasted by Martin Lewis and Age UK as a blunt measure that will hurt those on modest pensions who struggle to make ends meet. Is there more hard medicine to come? Katy Balls speaks to Kate Andrews and John McTernan, former political secretary to Tony Blair.
17 min listen
The Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to give a statement to Parliament on Monday outlining the state of public finances, including a ‘£20 billion black hole’. James Heale talks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews about the strategy behind this: will this speech lay the ground work for the Autumn budget? How new are these economic issues? And, with the Conservatives embarking on a long leadership election, will Labour have a free rein for their plans? Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
The appointment of Becky Francis CBE to lead the Department for Education’s shake-up of the national curriculum is typical of Labour’s plan to embed their ideology across our institutions – or rather entrench it, since the long march is almost complete. On the face of it, Professor Francis is ‘unburdened by doctrine’, to use Sir Keir Starmer’s phrase about how Labour intends to govern. As former director of the Institute of Education and current CEO of the Education Endowment Foundation, she has the outward appearance of a technocrat. But scratch the surface and, like so many Labour appointees, she emerges as a long-standing adherent of left-wing identity politics. After earning
Chancellor Reeves adamant she will ‘make sure the sums add up’ Rachel Reeves gave an interview with Laura Kuenssberg this morning in which she emphasised the ‘mess’ she says the Conservatives have left behind, and restated that Labour would not spend outside of its fiscal rules. Kuenssberg asked the Chancellor whether she would be prepared to ignore the recommendations of the independent pay review bodies, which have called for a public sector pay rise of 5.5 per cent. Reeves would not confirm the government’s position, but accepted that ‘there is a cost to not settling’ public sector pay disputes, implying she might be open to above-inflation pay increases. What is
As the dust around the election settles, a question Tory MPs and supporters still grapple with is why Rishi Sunak called the election when he did – not least because economic indicators point to improvements over the summer and autumn, as inflation returns to target and growth starts to pick up. But Rachel Reeves, the new Chancellor, is having none of this narrative. ‘I really don’t buy this idea that somehow we’ve been handed a golden inheritance,’ she told Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC this morning, in her first sit-down interview since she entered No. 11. ‘If the former prime minister and chancellor had thought things were so good, they