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Tony Blair vs Labour?
00:33:32
The former Prime Minister says the Labour government has “no coherent plan”.
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- [00:00]
Adam Fleming
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- [00:06]
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- [01:01]
Adam Fleming
Alex and Faisal, I've got a special offer for you. It's more of an invitation.
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Alex Forsyth
Go on.
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Adam Fleming
What are you doing on August 10th to the 14th?
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Alex Forsyth
Oh, my God. No idea.
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Faisal Islam
I have got a plan for the 14th because you know what's happening on the 14th. I hope you haven't double booked here.
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Adam Fleming
Oh, oh, what's happening on the 14th?
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Faisal Islam
It's the solar eclipse in Ibiza.
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Adam Fleming
I knew you're going to be there.
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Faisal Islam
No, but I imagine I might go. I mean, how cool would that be? Solar eclipse.
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Adam Fleming
Yeah. Well, I mean, the second most exciting thing happening on the 14th, for example, is newscast live at the Edinburgh Fringe.
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Faisal Islam
Oh, yeah.
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Adam Fleming
Triumphant return to editor. And I was going to say the door is open to both of you, either of you, to come to any or all of the days.
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Faisal Islam
Adam, the eclipse can wait.
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Adam Fleming
Great. Glad to hear it. The eclipse that you weren't going to anyway. Yeah. So basically I'll get my people to speak to your people, but we're going to be in Edinburgh the 10th to the 14th. That's Monday to Friday. You don't have to get tickets because you've got a standing invitation to be on the stage. But if you as a newscaster would like to come along, if you go to the website, ed fringe.com boy's name haircut is how I remember it. Ed fringe.com click on shows and then type in newscast and you'll find all the information about how to get a ticket there. And maybe Alex and maybe Faisal will be there, but I'm detecting a little bit of lack of commitment from the two of them at the moment. More diary related than entirely diary related.
- [02:24]
Alex Forsyth
I tell you, if there is a space in that diary. I will be there.
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Adam Fleming
Great.
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Faisal Islam
Good. Is it the comedy festival?
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Adam Fleming
It's comedy, entertainment, lectures, music, dance, mime, the whole. You will get all those art forms on newscast that week.
- [02:39]
Faisal Islam
Okay, great.
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Alex Forsyth
Mime. I'm not sure mime really works for a podcast.
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Adam Fleming
What am I miming now, Faisal? You can see me?
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Alex Forsyth
I can almost tell you without seeing you.
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Faisal Islam
Oh, I don't know.
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Alex Forsyth
It's a fishing thing, I'd say. Let's get on with this episode of Newscast.
- [02:52]
Adam Fleming
No, I'm turning some pages. Documents. Almost as if I'm reading Tony Blair's polemic that he published.
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Faisal Islam
Yes.
- [03:00]
Adam Fleming
On Tuesday night, which we will discuss in this episode of Newscast.
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Alex Forsyth
Newscast, Newscast from the BBC.
- [03:05]
Adam Fleming
Humanity's next great voyage begins.
- [03:07]
Faisal Islam
We are in the midst of a rupture.
- [03:09]
Alex Forsyth
Nostalgia will not bring back the old order.
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Adam Fleming
Six, seven.
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Tony Blair (clip)
Yeah, it's supposed to be me as a doctor.
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Faisal Islam
Daddy has. Has also a special connotation. Thinking about it like a panto helped.
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Alex Forsyth
Do we play music now or what do we do?
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Adam Fleming
Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio.
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Faisal Islam
It's Faisal in the newscast studio, too.
- [03:27]
Alex Forsyth
And it's Alex in the Westminster studio.
- [03:30]
Adam Fleming
And, Faisal, I promise we will talk about the story you've been working on today, which is the new level of the energy price cap, indeed, set by ofgem, the regulator. But first of all, we're gonna talk about the 5,000 words that have gripped Westminster and beyond. Because, Alex, Tony Blair on Tuesday night published on the website of his think tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, this big, long essay where he basically called out lots of the things he thinks the Labour has done wrong and lots of the things that he think could go wrong in a future Labour leadership contest.
- [04:00]
Alex Forsyth
Yeah, it was a really wide, broad, long, 5,600 words kind of critique of where the Labour Party finds itself. And I think it's fair to say that nobody, no sort of individual or even part of the Labour Party, really escaped his criticism. If I was going to boil it down, I'd say the central kind of key messages are this. He says there's been too much focus on politics and personality and who's up and who's down, not enough focus on policy and the policy things that he was suggesting. He was saying, basically, you shouldn't be wedded to a kind of, like, political ideology. Like, I'm of the left and so I believe this, or I'm of the right, and therefore I think this. He was essentially, and I'm paraphrasing here, arguing you should look at the challenges the country's facing. Things like the advance of AI big geopolitical shifts, and you should work out what the best policy is and then put that forward. And the other bit of this, he was saying that this government has coherent plan to do that, which I think was one of the most stinging criticisms of the current Labour government. And beyond that, he was also warning, you shouldn't oust the prime minister unless you've had a proper debate about policy and come up with a plan. And buried in all of that, there was kind of a warning that many are seeing as don't just automatically retreat to the Labour left as a solution to some of this stuff.
- [05:16]
Adam Fleming
A very, very good summary. And here is Tony Blair himself. Sorry, sir. Tony Blair, who went on the Today program to summarise what he was arguing in his pamphlet.
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Alex Forsyth
Why?
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Tony Blair (clip)
Why write this?
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Adam Fleming
You've avoided it for so long.
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Tony Blair (clip)
Yes, because as you rightly say, it's possible. We're about to have the seventh prime minister in 10 years. A serious country can't do that to itself. And what is bizarre about the present situation is that we're all talking about politics when the key thing is to talk about policy. If you don't decide what your policy direction is, there's no point in changing the leader. And so the whole essence of the essay is to say it should be policy first, politics second.
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Adam Fleming
And, Faisal, my theory about what Tony Blair is trying to do here, and I'm now just like, ambushing you with this, so, Mark, my homework for me, is that he's trying to sort of raise the bar for what the upcoming Labour leadership contest might be like, because it's sort of looking like it'll be an argument about who's the best communicator. Will it be Wes? Would it be Andy Burnham? Could Keir Starmer like up his game? This is Tony Blair saying, well, no, it has to be a contest of ideas and contest of visions for where the next prime minister wants to take the country.
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Faisal Islam
I think one of the features of politics that I've noticed mainly from the outside is that it becomes a sort of competition to get to a winner takes all position. And then when you look like you're going to be the next prime minister, everything falls into line. And indeed, that is one of the narratives about what might happen with Andy Burnham if he wins in. In Makerfield in is that everyone sort of, you know, the seas open for him and he just walks down the street. There isn't even a contest. And so from that Perspective. I thought the other contribution we had from former Prime Minister, from Rishi Sunak,
- [07:03]
Adam Fleming
who was also on the TIS A program, coincidentally this morning.
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Faisal Islam
I mean, I mean, I don't know why they didn't bring up Liz Truss as well, but there we go. But is that there is a certain value in the contest of ideas, of being shown you're able to defend your ideas, to promote your ideas, that they're subject to scrutiny, not just of the. Another side, whether that's sort of in your own political party or the media or a debate. You know, I recall even in the internal conversation between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, there was a debate. Myself and Chris got to sort of, you know, sit at the sidelines, like studying.
- [07:42]
Adam Fleming
I remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Faisal Islam
And we checked.
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Adam Fleming
That's a reference to you and Crisp.
- [07:47]
Faisal Islam
We chucked in some questions about, you know, things like fiscal plans, for example, into this trust which, you know, may have, you know, one wants to kick tires when you're. And I think, I think one of the, One of the. One of the issues as regards Andy Burnham is done some very interesting things in Manchester. Other interesting things have also happened in Manchester. The extent to which there's a whole set of other things that. That don't overlap with what being a metropolitan mayor requires. I don't doubt that he's got some interesting views on that, but like, nobody's asking that.
- [08:24]
Adam Fleming
And of course, in Makerfield, Andy Burnham is facing a by election and he's facing Robert Kenyon, who is the Reform UK candidate. And as I will then say at the end of this podcast, there's a list of all the other candidates available on the BBC News website. But that, yeah, that by election is. The campaign's only just got started.
- [08:40]
Faisal Islam
Well, that's precisely the point, isn't it? Which is that's a by election. And so literally he can't. I mean, if, If Tony Blair's looking for some big argument about how to run the country, I think sort of tactically you're not going to get that from the Burnham camp right now. Although he has responded to respond. Yeah, but, but listen, you know, in terms of. From. With the Microsoft economics hat on, you know, there are some issues which emerge from looking at what else is happening in the world. Like I sometimes I put this critique actually, generally in terms of the Westminster bubble to the extent that it exists, it seems to rely a lot on history and on repeating cycles. And this was very much like when Theresa May did this or this is very much like when Wilson did that. And, and I kind of feel, as an economist, I feel that what matters more, and I think Tony Blair essay is good at this, is what actually, what's happening at the same time, not in history, all around the world. What is happening in the Gulf? It is interesting. Like, just ask reasonable questions like why is the Gulf, like buying up all the AI chips and hoarding them? Like, what are they going to do with those? How does that affect the uk? That's just one random example. Right. But there's a bunch of things happening around the world. You know, all the rest of the, you know, what is Canada doing with China? Now, that sounds like it's irrelevant, but you've got an ally, a key ally, five eyes and everything, Canada deciding, actually we're not gonna, we're gonna approach Canada in a different way, approach China a different way. And so, you know, so I, I, I, I think that that insight that what matters right now for people in leaders is consciousness of how the world is changing across the world. I do buy into that.
- [10:26]
Adam Fleming
Well, and everyone who's read this article or heard about it has an opinion now. And I think my opinion is that Tony Blair still has a genius for sort of hitting the nail on the head whether you agree or disagree. And there's give and then Alex, I'll get your thoughts on, on them. Number one, his critique of what Starmer and Rachel Reeves have done so far. He says very clearly what they should have done when they got into power was say, the economy and the economic and the, the public finances are worse than we thought. The, the manifesto doesn't stand anymore. We're going to have to raise taxes, but they should have raised VAT instead so that everyone paid a little bit more on every purchase they did of, of, of goods and services, rather than putting up the employer national insurance thing, because he said that was, that was a dampener on business. So that's a quite clear example of where there's an alternative universe where labor did things differently when they got into power after the election in 2024. And then just on the whole AI thing, which it can be quite bamboozling about, well, where do you even start about making some decisions about what your vision is? He does this very simple, conjures up this very simple image of somebody sitting in their front room who can use AI and probably eventually quantum computing to hack every single bank in Britain. And it's a really easily done thing. And I think that's quite a good way of conjuring up the challenge to CyberSecurity. Posed by AI. Alex, what else would you like to pick out from this, this mega, mega essay?
- [11:48]
Alex Forsyth
Yeah, I mean, I think you're right on. So one of the key criticisms of the Starmer government wasn't just about the decisions they made around tax refer for employers in national insurance, but it was all of the other things that he suggests are sort of hampering business or providing headwinds instead of tailwinds, as he put it. So it's like the Workers Rights Bill, things about increasing the minimum wage, things about actual labor manifesto promises that Tony Blair is now suggesting that they should have made effectively the argument to ditch because of the situation the government found itself in when it took office. But I think what that is is sort of part of the wider argument that he's attempting to make here, which is that he's saying, you know, there's lots of changes in the world. He compares the advance of AI to the industrial revolution, suggests it's going to be of the same sort of scale and consequence in the terms of how it changes jobs and the economy and pretty much everything, delivery of services and all the rest of it. And then he also talks about the kind of big geopolitical picture and the role of America and China and Britain's relationship with the European Union. And what I think he's saying, if you put all that together, is, look, don't worry about kind of having to stick to a certain sort of set of values because that's what's defining your choices. Look at everything that's going on and decide what you've got to do and crack on and do it. And I think when it comes to those things around business and the decisions that labor made or and actually the government would argue implemented some of its manifesto promises that it was elected on, what he's saying there is like you shouldn't have been deterred from your kind of central economic growth mission because that is so essential to the economy at this point. And then he goes on to talk about other stuff like the need to reduce welfare spending, even floating the idea about whether the triple lock, so that thing that guarantees that pensions increase at a certain rate, whether that's affordable in the long term. I mean, these are sort of some quite difficult challenges. And he did acknowledge that he said some of this is going to be horribly hard. But he's suggesting, really I think that the governments should kind of plow on with them anyway if they believe they are the right things for the country in what is a quite a difficult set of circumstances. The caveat to some of that, of course, is that politically and practically some of the things that he's advocating are pretty difficult. You know, the reason that many frontline politicians now if you want to put it that way, are not suggesting, looking at the pensions triple lock is because they know that that's not going to be particular popular, not particularly popular with a whole section of the public and governments do still need to get elected at the end of the day. The other criticism of this is that some of the stuff that he is suggesting in terms of policy, which is where he wants the focus to be so like on loosening net zero, on exploiting oil and gas in the North Sea, on loosing regulations, on smaller tax state, they are not values that many in the Labour Party might naturally align with. You know, so you can make the kind of argument that Tony Blair is making which is that you shouldn't be hamstring strung or entirely driven by your political ideology in the face of pragmatic and practical solutions. But you've got to factor in how that's going to sit with the people that vote for you and with your own party at the same time. You know, that's just kind of politics. So I think that's where, where some of what he's suggesting is going to hit up against. And we're already starting to see a bit of this in some of the reaction people in the Labour Party now who are saying all well and good Satony, we know you won three elections, but we don't know if they are the solutions that are right for the country and our voter base and what we believe in right now.
- [15:05]
Adam Fleming
I just find when I was reading it and then listening to him on the Today programme that a lot of what he was suggesting in terms of things that should happen sounded either quite conservative like with a capital C or quite liberal with a small L or quite deregulatory with a small D. And Nick Robinson obviously came to that conclusion as well because he then put that to him.
- [15:24]
Tony Blair (clip)
You see, I'm not asking the question about is it Tory, is it reform, is it Greens, is it Labor? I'm just saying, okay, take a step back, analyze the world. Where do we go? And I don't really. I think part of the problem with the way we have this debate is that it always does start and usually end with politics. You started a sentence there and you stopped.
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Adam Fleming
I don't really, I thought you were
- [15:48]
Faisal Islam
going to say I don't really care.
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Tony Blair (clip)
Well, I was going to say, I was going to say I don't really care whether it's left or right in a traditional sense. You don't really care whether it's labor anymore, do you? In that sense, as long as the policies. But I don't think Labor's got something. I'm not tribal in the sense that I think one political party is going to have the exclusive capability of deciding the right answer. I guess the interesting thing when you go out of politics, and this is where I think the most interesting politics today comes from, people outside of politics. Because when you step out of politics and you start seeing how the world is changing, it's not really about traditional left and right politics. In fact, I think that gets in the way a lot of the time of just asking the question, okay, look at the world. What's. What do we. How do we make sense of it? How do we keep Britain strong, its economy strong, how do we build its military and so on?
- [16:40]
Adam Fleming
Listening to that is quite amazing. You just think, right, Tony, if you wanted to help the political party that you're still a member of, I assume and have affection for and think is probably the best vehicle, you should just say, yes, the labor government doing the right things would be the best vehicle for achieving all of this. But he didn't say that. But then I suppose actually at one point he was thinking about setting up a breakaway party, wasn't he? In the Corbyn era, we think. And actually that would have got in the way of his argument, which is you need to make some decisions about what you want for the country and then let the politics flow from that, I suppose.
- [17:12]
Alex Forsyth
Yeah. I mean, that is his central argument, But I don't think that necessarily lands brilliantly with some sections of the Labour Party, to say the least. And, you know, I think the thing that's really being picked up that wasn't spoken about in this 5600 word essay is the notion of inequality and the level of inequality that the country is facing. So we have had Andy Burnham already making that point in an interview that he's done with the observer newspaper. And interestingly, in the last kind of, I don't know, 15 minutes or so, Wes Streeting has also written a piece for the Guardian newspaper in which he's saying something very similar. The missing word in the essay was inequality. And this notion about whether the arguments that Tony Blair is making, which, you know, and let's just remember he was the most electorally successful Labour leader winning three general elections. And I do think that that is why what he says is being listened to and examined and reacted to in the way that it. But he's not universally popular within the party. Some people didn't like his brand of politics, Labour Party politics. And I think now there are plenty of people saying I'm not sure that this kind of set of solutions is necessarily in touch with the needs of the country. And I think this notion about kind of wealth distribution and income equality and broader inequality is what is gonna people, people in the Labour Party that don't agree with what Tony Blair is saying are going to start to coalesce around that notion and suggest it can that be solved by some of the things that he's he advancing in this argument?
- [18:37]
Adam Fleming
Faisal, I promise I'll let you talk about the price cap in a second, but I'm going to give you a really hard philosophical brain teaser question to end this section of the podcast. On the Tony Blair essay, you get quite a few people saying, oh, lots of people at Westminster know what needs to be done. It's this list of things which are quite politically difficult to deliver. And then you get Tony Blair saying it's all about having a big vision that matches all the big changes that are happening in the world. I'm not really convinced we have a political system where all of those things can actually happen because there's lots of stakeholders, there's lots of constraints like how much the government's borrowing. There's also the fact that are we in a world where you could get everyone to sign up to a vision that allows you to do the hard political things that delivering the vision requires? I'm just not, not convinced that we have that system.
- [19:26]
Faisal Islam
And Tony Blair was a master of the broadcast era, you know, 24 hour news emerg around, I forget probably just around the time he became, maybe just before he became Prime Minister and he would be used to the Prime Minister of the day having, having the mic, as it were, and being able to command the airwaves.
- [19:48]
Adam Fleming
I also remember one of his last speeches was about the media was out of control and he said when they, they're pursuing a story, they're like a feral beast. And like the beast has only got more feral and there's more beasts in the intervening period.
- [19:59]
Faisal Islam
Well, exactly like one wonders what would have happened with the Iraq war in the era of social media. There was of, you know, fair amount of protests about, about that. And indeed the very political system upon which he built this, what he would say, well, the stable, it was pretty stable, wasn't it? Compared to what we've got, what we've had since. But the, the, the stability to carry out longer term policies. That took a couple of terms. Two and a half, Two and a half terms were built on big majorities
- [20:32]
Adam Fleming
I guess, which Starmer currently has.
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Faisal Islam
Well, that's the strange thing. And then I think the, the, the takeaway from here is what I was trying to read between the lines is he seems to, he seems to say that. He doesn't seem to defend Starmer. He doesn't seem to say you're mad the con, you know, the Labor Party is going mad. He doesn't seem to say that.
- [20:52]
Adam Fleming
Well, he says that having another, another change of Prime Minister would be bad. But then sort of comes up with lots of reasons for why the current Prime Minister is not up to the job. Even though he says he has a
- [21:00]
Alex Forsyth
fondness, he doesn't say having another Prime Minister would be bad. He says ousting the Prime Minister without a proper policy, discussion or plan.
- [21:07]
Faisal Islam
That's why I was like, ah, okay, so you're not actually attacking the idea of changing Prime Minister then, then I was just, you know, he said Andy Burnham was an outstanding minister in his government, but I don't like various things he said about neoliberalism in the past 40 years. And oh, now you have to help me here. He, he had, he, he likes way streeting but he had an issue about
- [21:29]
Alex Forsyth
it was his policy of equalizing income tax and capital gains was the one that he singled out as something that's not necessarily the solution.
- [21:35]
Adam Fleming
And rejoining the EU because Blair says you would only want to rejoin the EU or come up with a new structured relationship with the European Union from a position of economic strength which the UK currently doesn't.
- [21:45]
Faisal Islam
And he says that's because of tech regulation, which is a fascinating thing. This is a guy that was like had huge amount of influence, you know, behind the scenes post 2016 in the debate that happened and now he's saying because of the AI related tech freedom from EU regulation, that would be a reason not to rejoin. So, so massive food for thought. But I, but I am not answering your question because it was a really hard question, which was a hard. But is it tougher? Is it tougher? Well, there's two things. Is it tougher to govern the UK right now? That's a big question. Is the supply chain of politicians going into the main parties, does it not sort of yield in the Conservative Labour Party? We've been our parties of government for, for many decades do not yield. These sorts of politicians that can command the stage that have a vision, that have a hint of land, you know, in many different subject areas.
- [22:46]
Adam Fleming
Well, one to ponder for future decades as Britain either declines, stays the same or gets better. There's, there's impartiality. Right. Faisal, the one thing that's not declining, the energy price cap. So off jam the regulator set the new price cap. So this is for the three months from July when the current period ends. What's a good way of thinking about how much it's going up by a number?
- [23:07]
Faisal Islam
13.
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Adam Fleming
I mean they're always good.
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Faisal Islam
13 is a good way. Is actually the best way to. Is a very good question actually, as ever, Adam, because we tend to presentational reasons, we tend to think of it in terms of a typical annual bill. And there's a twist in that story that's actually really important and tells its own story.
- [23:26]
Adam Fleming
Okay.
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Faisal Islam
But that typical bill based on average usage has gone up from about 16, just over 1600 pounds to 1860.
- [23:38]
Adam Fleming
That's the annual equivalent. Yeah. This is the price cap for three months.
- [23:42]
Faisal Islam
For three months. So. So it's gone up £220, £18amonth. But this is where it gets quite interesting. So it's gone up again having the government.
- [23:52]
Adam Fleming
This is the strait of Hormuz blockage feeding into the cost of living in a very real way.
- [23:57]
Faisal Islam
Wholesale gas market, electricity market costs, it's split and this is quite interesting actually. It's gone up 24 in terms of gas and 5% in terms of electricity. And there may be an interesting policy story there, which is the much talked about and concerning kind of inextricable link between gas and electricity prices, which means that the electricity price gets ratcheted up when the gas price goes up when it shouldn't.
- [24:23]
Adam Fleming
Because we have to fire up gas power stations to fill the gap and
- [24:26]
Faisal Islam
the grid and then that price is charged for everybody else. Yeah, it's not.
- [24:31]
Adam Fleming
So even though I only have electricity in my house, I have to worry about the wholesale gas price because my electricity bill is linked to the wholesale price of gas. Even though with this latest price cap gap, the cost of gas to the house is going up more than the cost of electricity.
- [24:45]
Faisal Islam
So is, is that link starting to break? Yeah, a little bit. That's important.
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Adam Fleming
Interesting.
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Faisal Islam
Yeah. Now the other, the other thing is the, the reason to be like the concern, it could be worse is what I would say. Like, if you take me go back two months when we're in here talking about the blockade of the straight of Hormuz, I'd have settled for 13 I have to say. Right. You know, it could have gone to the moon. Right. Frankly. And we certainly haven't had what we had four years ago with prices trebling. Right. You know, the equivalent of what I've said is 1800 was two and a half thousand, but that was only with a massive government subsidy. It would have been four and a half thousand otherwise. Now for the period that this is valid for, which is July, August, September, actually we only use 7% of our annual energy consumption occurs then because it's hot and sunny. Exactly. And so that's one of the sort of slight, like we're talking about all this stuff when we can see what's happening outside. And so that actually means as concerning as this will be for people who are absolutely at the end of their tether and on the edge. I don't, I think I tried to do the math here. I think you're talking seven, eight pounds less than ten pounds a month in terms of these three months.
- [26:03]
Adam Fleming
Because even though your unit cost is going up, you're not using a lot of units because it's hot and sunny.
- [26:07]
Faisal Islam
Exactly. But obviously if it's stays where we are, and that's all completely determined by what happens in the straits and by the way the news as interpreted by the markets is that it looks like some sort of peace steel settlement is more likely than it has been. So the oil price has fallen, the gas price has fallen. So if the word if does matter here, if it, if, if it continues. Yes, we have a problem in, in winter at, at these prices.
- [26:35]
Adam Fleming
And Faisal, you dangled a morsel of, of interesting. Well, it's all interesting, but a little interesting morsel in front of us. But just before we do that, Alex, the politics of this, it's back to the, the push me, pull me thing about the cost of living, isn't it? The government can do something that in their eyes is quite big like taking 150 pounds of kind of government related costs of people's energy bills. But then the energy market has other ideas and pushes them up again.
- [26:58]
Alex Forsyth
Yeah. And the government can keep trying to want to talk about the cost of living as we know it has and it can keep getting pushed off course in even that respect as well as well as actually the impact that all of this is having on people's kind of day to day living experience. We know where the government's at on this specifically effectively to the point that Pfizer was making, that there is still a hope that, you know, there is some sort of solution or at least, you know, easing in the Strait of Hormuz, which means that prices ease a little bit before it gets to the colder months and the next kind of stage of this energy price cap. But they are drawing up behind the scenes some sort of plan for if that doesn't happen. And they do need to step in and offer some sort of support to households. What's important to note about the government's position right now is that they are not looking, and they've have been really, really open about this. They're not looking at some sort of universal level of support like we had under the last Conservative government after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when we saw lots of huge spikes in energy prices, because they think that that was, you know, just too untargeted and that people were getting support and help with their energy bills who didn't really need it, and it cost the country an awful lot of money. So what the government's been really clear about, the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has been really clear about, is if they do come up with a targeted package, it will be targeted. So we don't know exactly what that would look like, but they try and find a way to tailor it to support the households on lower incomes or in the need to avoid a huge big spend. Because, of course, the background to all of this is that, you know, the government's still worried about the public finances and Rachel Reeves is still wanting to stick to her fiscal rules about it all. So that's where they're at on possible intervention. And in the meantime, yeah, the cost of living is a huge issue for this government and one they keep wanting to talk about. And they are attempting to do things like we saw, you know, the kind of reducing taxes on fun of last week. So things like, you know, entry to amusement parks or days out with the kids in the summer, soft play, the cost of that soft play, roller coasters. And also, they've had this thing now where attempting to reduce tariffs on some food goods in the hope of bringing down the costs of 100 or so items in supermarkets. But the argument is always when they're doing those things, given the much bigger picture and what's happening on the energy markets and therefore as a consequence to people's bills, are people really feeling the difference of any of the interventions the government's really attempting to make on this?
- [29:07]
Adam Fleming
And Pfizer, what was the nugget you wanted to bring us from your digging into the data from OFGEM today?
- [29:12]
Faisal Islam
So we use this idea of a typical household old dual fuel bill A lot. Now what's happened is OFGEM has changed its calculation. And when I first saw this, I'd forgotten that this happened every three or four years. And I thought, well, this looks like a bit of a stitch up, doesn't it?
- [29:27]
Adam Fleming
Well, to make it look less bad,
- [29:28]
Faisal Islam
make it look less bad. So, in fact, the actual typical household bill when it comes in July will be considerably less than the number I just used, which was 1860, it'll be 1663, so 200 pounds less. Why? Because actually, typical use Ofgem, say, has gone down, and it's gone down an awful lot, actually. And that is what has happened. I've checked this out with a couple of bosses of energy companies. You're talking about a 17 reduction in just a couple of years in the average use of gas by a household. So that's 2, 000 kilowatt hours a year, down from 11, 500 to 9,500. That is, I did the calculation on the movie.
- [30:08]
Adam Fleming
That is a well 17 fall in. Anything is big.
- [30:10]
Faisal Islam
I mean, that is at that. Is that what is going on here? And this, you can look at this in two ways and it kind of distills to the same thing, right? Which is, it's energy efficiency. It's, you know, in the old days, it's LED light bulbs, which have been a tremendous policy success. You know, I remember all the debates about that, you know, save unbelievable amounts of energy, electricity, obviously it is turning thermostat down. It is potentially some heat pumps, some solar, all this, all this sort of stuff changing from gas to electricity, or
- [30:39]
Adam Fleming
just people being super aware of the energy price because it's on podcasts every single, every quarter there.
- [30:44]
Faisal Islam
Well, and it's been high, right? Responding to high. But then there's also people using electric blankets to heat the human, not heat the home.
- [30:54]
Adam Fleming
Right?
- [30:55]
Faisal Islam
Is that sensible energy efficiency or is that, you know, terrible sign of poverty? Should people be allowed to just, you know, or people should, you know, should normal just be. You put on the heater whenever you want to? I, I don't know. Or as I heard directly when I attended a call center for, for an energy company, you know, you do get people calling in, and this is to Alex's point, you know, who badly, for health reasons, need to use electricity for refrigerated medicines, for the stair lift, who get put. Whose electricity gets cut off when they don't have enough to put in the prepayment meter. You know, so, so there's a bit of, there's like, if you like forced lower use of energy and there's energy efficiency. But in general terms we've seen this in other countries and it goes back to the Blair point where a politician can have a conversation with the public and say, do you know what? We all need to use less energy.
- [31:46]
Adam Fleming
Because in Germany, for example, they were very explicit with the German people and we've got to pull together in a sort of war effort to use less Russian gas.
- [31:54]
Faisal Islam
And they had to because it was physically fewer.
- [31:56]
Adam Fleming
Whereas we're in a country where you, if just can't have that conversation on a jumper when you're cold, you can't have that.
- [32:01]
Faisal Islam
People literally get fired for that. And so, but it sort of happened. So I think that this, you know, this may explain when you see the pot, you know, know, you know, people's general sense of like I'm being squeezed. But there is some degree and I don't know how much of this is sort of if you like bad loss of energy access versus people being smart and cutting down on their energy at time of high prices. But it's a bit of both.
- [32:28]
Adam Fleming
But it's good saving or bad saving.
- [32:30]
Faisal Islam
But it's a big change. But it's a big change. And it's a big change that you know, I again like. It's, you can see it in the data and not many people are talking about it in politics but I bet it's affecting every voter's sense of well being. And there's some interesting government schemes, you know, we filmed with somebody who, I didn't realize it at the time, who was getting solar panels paid for by the taxpayer on their house in Derby. Very, very happy. Previously had to use an electric blanket rather than heat their home because it was so cold. You know, it's a lot of stuff going on. It's, you know, it's interesting and energy in particular is really interesting. And they'll be, they'll be happy if, if the gas price, if they can delink the electricity price and the gas price, which is what they say they want to do, which is highly technical, that would be a big move.
- [33:14]
Adam Fleming
Another thing we shall see if it happens in the next decade or so. But that's all for this episode of newscast. So just a reminder about the Edinburgh Fringe Festival tickets sale@edfringe.com I think Faisal actually the eclipse might be on the 12th, not the 14th. Ah, okay. So good job. You're not going to Ibiza because you would have booked another one day. I'm sure you still would have found a way to have fun, but yeah, Faisal, thank you very much.
- [33:36]
Faisal Islam
Thank you.
- [33:37]
Adam Fleming
And Alex, good to catch up with you too. Although not in a boiling hot tent in a field in Wales.
- [33:41]
Alex Forsyth
Yeah, no, it's a lot cooler here. I'm happy for that.
- [33:44]
Adam Fleming
And just a reminder that all the candidates in the Makerfield By Election are available to view on the BBC News website. And we will be talking about them all in the next episode of By Election Cast, which we will be recording on Friday and then putting in the newscast feed at some point during the day on Friday. And there'll be another classic episode of Newscast coming your way very soon.
- [34:05]
Faisal Islam
Bye bye.
- [34:06]
Adam Fleming
Newscast.
- [34:07]
Alex Forsyth
Newscast from the BBC.
- [34:09]
Tony Blair (clip)
Well, thank you for making it to the end of another newscast. You clearly ooze stamina. Can I gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? And then, without having to do anything else, our meandering chat will miraculously make its way to your phone.
- [34:36]
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Alex Forsyth
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