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- [00:00]
Adam Fleming
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk. Early birds always rise to the occasion
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James Cook
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Felicity Evans
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James Cook
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Felicity Evans
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Adam Fleming
At the BBC we go further so you see clearer With a subscription to BBC.com and the BBC app you get unlimited articles and videos ad free podcasts, the BBC News Chann streaming Live24.7 plus hundreds of acclaimed documentaries from less than a dollar a week for your first year. Read, watch and listen to trusted independent journalism and storytelling. It all starts with a subscription to BBC.com and the BBC app. Find out more@BBC.com unlimited. Hello, this is the rebooted Election Cast, which of course was where Newscast actually began several general elections ago, but we're resurrecting brand. Sound like a management consultant, don't I? Because there's a huge set of elections happening in Scotland, Wales and many areas of England on the 7th of May. And so this is a really good opportunity for us to dig into politics as it plays out in different parts of the UK and interacts with national politics too. So the outcome of these elections and the issues that are brought up by them and the answers and solutions that people come up with will will have a relevance to everyone in the uk. Also, as Chris Mason always says, it's politics for real. Your votes, politicians asking for your votes, making commitments that are happening in the real world as opposed to the sometimes theoretical world of Westminster. And if we're doing electioncast, that means we've got an excuse to bring back Newscast's most popular ever election related gimmick, it's the Remoter Voter, where you tell us about why you need a postal vote because you're not able to vote in person on May 7. Some people have already got in touch. Hey, Adam. And everyone at Newscast, it's Dan here from Walthamstow. I will be a remote voter this year because I will be at Eurovision directing six countries, so I'll be sending my love from Vienna thinking about who is going to get in on the 7th of May. Happy voting. So, so jealous. I'm a big Eurovision fan. Good luck in Austria, Dan, and good luck looking after all those countries as well. So a reminder, if you want to take part in Remoter Voter, we want to hear your reasons why you cannot vote in person on May 7. And the way we've tended to do it in the past is we have a remote voter who is maybe just down the road or nearby but unable to vote. We have a remoter voter who, who's gone a bit further afield, like Dan going to Austria. And then we have the remotest voter who is somebody who is, I don't know, counting tortoises in the Galapagos Islands. An actual example of a newscaster, motor voter from the past, actually. So that's how we like to do it. And you can get in touch by emailing newscastbc.co.uk, or you can WhatsApp us on 033-01-239480 and you can send us voice notes or we might ask you to send us a voice note. And those are the ways to get in touch. And what you can do now, though, is listen to the first episode in a brand new run of electioncast.
- [03:33]
Joe Pike
Newscast, Newscast from the BBC.
- [03:38]
Adam Fleming
Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio, it's Joe Pike.
- [03:41]
Joe Pike
Also in the newscast studio, it's James in Glasgow.
- [03:43]
Adam Fleming
And joining us throughout this miniseries of election casts, it's Felicity Evans, host of WalesCast and BBC Wales money editor. Hello, Felicity.
- [03:50]
Felicity Evans
Hey, Adam, how are you?
- [03:52]
Adam Fleming
Thank you for joining us.
- [03:53]
Felicity Evans
Pleasure.
- [03:54]
Adam Fleming
So we're here for the next few weeks. We'll pop up every Friday, although maybe we'll assemble, with bonus episodes if necessary, some big campaign trail revelations. We will be decoding every twist and turn of the campaigns in the various bits of the uk. But first of all, we're going to go back to basics. We're going to start filling in our election cast Binder and Joe, would you like to kick us off with just actually, what is happening in May?
- [04:20]
Joe Pike
Well, big elections for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Senate and lots of English local council elections too. 5,000 seats up for grabs in England across 136 different councils. Some mayoralties. Too many different narratives that different parties are trying to spin. But I think the most significant one is what this means for Keir Starmer's grip on the Labour leadership and on the keys to number 10. So much talk that if May is bad for him, we could see a leadership challenge. And certainly in terms of the English council elections, we are not talking about any Labour target seats. This is a defensive election for the Labour Party. Well, how many seats they can hold on to, how they can sort of stem the flow of seats they could lose to other parties? Because we're mainly talking about seats that were last contested in 2022 where Labour were doing far better in the polls than they are doing now. In those elections. So in terms of the 5,000 seats we're talking about this time, Labour hold about half of them, the Conservatives hold about a quarter of them. And back then reform didn't really exist. So we could see possibly a repeat of what we saw last year, which is reform doing particularly well.
- [05:36]
Adam Fleming
James, just give us a reminder of how the Scottish Parliament is actually elected and the system, because it's not the same as the Westminster Parliament.
- [05:45]
James Cook
No. And that's, as you rightly point out, Adam, a good place to start because it's really important to remember that they're different. We've had the Scottish parliament since 1999 introduced after a referendum under the Labour government of Tony Blair. And there are 129 members of the Scottish Parliament, known as MSPs. Of them, 73 represent individual constituencies and straightforward there you have one vote on the constituency ballot and the person who gets the most votes in the constituency wins. And that is the same as Westminster, but they are supplemented by 56 additional seats who are elected using a system of proportional representation that's sometimes referred to as list seats, because the way that people are put forward for election there is that the parties, the individual political parties, decide on a list of the candidates, they rank them 1, 2, 3 and so on. And you get a six second vote. When you go into the. The polling booth and your second vote, you can vote for a party on the list and then what happens then is quite complicated, but basically it's. And you, Adam, are. I bet you can explain this, the Dehon method, because this is right up your. Right up your street of. Of. It's called the Dahont method. And what is that? It is a mathematical formula that basically determines how many seats you get on the second vote and what is. It weights them. So the more you get in the constituencies, the less you get on the list and more the other parties might get on the list. Obviously it depends on, to a certain degree, how many people vote for you. But it balances this out to try to ensure. The idea is to ensure more proportionality in the Parliament. And what that leads to in the end, supposed to lead to anyway, is a Parliament that is not usually a Parliament that has a majority government. A majority is not the bar for success in Scottish elections. It's only been achieved once in 2011 by the SNP and that was regarded as something of a freak result, although the SNP are talking about the potential of doing it again this time. But basically the whole idea of Hollywood was to have a more consensual politics, more collegiate politics, more discussions between parties. I mean, a lot of people don't think it's achieved that, but that was the idea.
- [08:05]
Adam Fleming
And Felicity, before we go into the voting system in Wales, please just give me the legit pronunciation of Seneth, because I think I'm doing the right thing by turning those two Ds into a sort of a third and a bit of a D. But then people do even then say, that's not right, even though I'm putting the effort in.
- [08:23]
Felicity Evans
Okay, we're going to go for it together. Adam, Ready? Senev.
- [08:26]
Adam Fleming
Senev.
- [08:27]
Felicity Evans
Yeah, that's right. So it's, think of it like the TH, basically is probably the best way to do it. So the Senev, which is Welsh for Parliament. It's the Welsh Parliament, basically. So well done. You get 100. 100% for that pronunciation.
- [08:39]
Adam Fleming
Thank you very much. This is taking me back to my. No, I didn't do A level politics. I didn't even do higher politics. I didn't cover politics at school. Anyway, this is an education. So, Felicity, Yeah, the, the voting system there and also the fact that there's been some changes as well this time around.
- [08:53]
Felicity Evans
There are massive changes this time around. So there's a lot for voters in Wales to get their heads around, really. And De Haunt is going to rear its ugly head again, I'm afraid, because that is now the voting system that will be used, used in its entirety in this election in Wales. I was talking to a Senate official the other day about this, actually, and she joked that she was thinking of getting T shirts printed saying I get to Hunt. So if she does that, Adam, I'll be sure to send one to you because I think you're probably the only person who can wear it legitimately. But basically what's happening is that the Senate is going from a system very similar to the one that James has described, although the Senate has always been a lot smaller than the Scottish Parliament. But what we had was 60ms's. 40 of them were elected via the first past the post system that we're all familiar with from Westminster elections. And then 20 of them were elected by this proportional representation system called De Hunt. Now, what is happening is that the Sened is going to be a lot bigger, so There will be 96 members of the SenEd or MS, and they will be elected entirely using that De Hont proportional representation system. And the idea, of course, is that that better reflects the way that people vote around the country. Although obviously it's worth saying that no System is perfect. So with this Dehon system, really, it does tend to favour parties that have a lot of momentum, the bigger parties. And also you need to sort of be hitting around about the 12% support mark in each constituency to start winning seats, roughly speaking, it's a rule of thumb, but around about 12% to start winning those seats. So when voters go to the polls, instead of two votes, they will only have one vote. They will exercise that vote for the party rather than for candidates who are standing. Although the candidates will be listed, there will be six candidates in 16 constituencies. And then De Hunt swings into action and we find out who wins.
- [10:53]
Joe Pike
What a legacy, Adam, of that Belgian lawyer and jurist who, what, 150 years ago, Victor Hondt invented this system and we're still talking about his. His work. How random.
- [11:04]
Adam Fleming
I mean, only every four or five years, though, like on a really daily basis.
- [11:08]
Joe Pike
Maybe for you. I. I think, I think always at the front of your mind. Oh, Victor.
- [11:13]
Adam Fleming
And then talking about electoral systems and nuances, Joe just then run us through. Let's just be really clear about the different things that are happening in England and also maybe some of the things that are not happening.
- [11:24]
Joe Pike
Well, we have every single London borough, all 32, having elections. We have a similar number of metropolitan boroughs around the country. Those are mainly in big cities in the Midlands and the north, seats up for grabs there. We've got district council elections, we've got unitary council elections, we've got six county council elections that had been postponed. So places like Norfolk and Suffolk and Essex, so lots of different contests, some of them will be all out, that is, every single council is re elected, some will be in thirds. And therefore, for a party like Reform, even though they could do well, it's actually more difficult for them, it's to gain control of a council because only a third of seats might be up for grabs, depending on which part of the country we're looking at.
- [12:15]
Adam Fleming
And one of the basics I learned as a political correspondent when you're covering elections is you've always got to go back to the baseline. In other words, what are you comparing this set of results to? So, James, take us to the baseline, which was the Scottish Parliament elections in 2021.
- [12:31]
James Cook
Yes. So the Scottish Parliament elections in 2021, the actual result, the SNP under Nicola Sturgeon, just as the country was still dealing with COVID really had a fantastic election result from their point of view. 64 seats, one short of a majority. The Conservatives were the second biggest party on 31. Labour still struggling, still really in the political wilderness. After having dominated Scottish politics for decades, they'd struggled in the past, like, 15, 20 years to cope with the rise of the SNP and the rise of support for Scottish independence as well. They were on 22, the Greens had eight and the Liberal Democrats had four seats. Although, not to be pedantic, but strictly speaking, on the night, when we refer to the baseline, the baseline will actually be a notional baseline, because there have been a few, not a huge amount, but a few boundary changes for this election and they just changed that result very slightly. So on the night, that's not the result we'll be referring back to in terms of gains and losses. There'll be a slight change and basically Labour loses seat. The Greens gain a seat notionally because the boffins have decided that that's probably what would have happened had these boundaries been in place at the last election.
- [13:45]
Adam Fleming
Just so we're really comparing like with like, even though the previous like didn't actually exist.
- [13:49]
James Cook
Exists.
- [13:50]
Adam Fleming
Exactly, yeah. And, Felicity, go back in your time machine to 2021 in Wales.
- [13:54]
Felicity Evans
Well, we have no baseline, Adam, now anymore, because, of course, the system is so radically different this time around. We can't compare the performance after the results come in this time to what happened in 2021, because then we had 60 seats, now we're going to have 96 seats. Then we had a completely different voting system and so on and so forth. But just to give you a broad brush of what we're looking out for, really, Labour had a good election last time around, the Conservatives too. Both of those parties are now very much on the ropes, particularly the Labour dominance in Wales, really, that's gone on for a century. If you think about it, for 100 years, labour has always been the biggest party after a general election or a Senate election in Wales, and it looks as if this time that might not be the case. So, you know, Joe was talking earlier about what's riding on this for Keir Starmer. Keir Starmer could potentially be the Labour Prime Minister who loses dominance in Wales, if the polling trends are to be believed. And of course, they are not predictions, these trends. And, you know, the only vote that counts is the one on the day and all of that. But consistently, the polling trends have suggested that Welsh Labour is really struggling to catch up with Plaid Cymru, the Independence Party in Wales, and Reform, who the polling suggests are duking it out, really, to be largest party. And last time around, Reform, obviously didn't have any seats at all in the Welsh Parliament. So it really is all change here.
- [15:30]
Adam Fleming
And we may as well get into the politics now that we've done the basics and kind of like the science bit of the elections. But I suppose it's a similar story for Labour in Scotland, James, isn't it?
- [15:40]
Joe Pike
Yeah.
- [15:40]
James Cook
And I think what is really striking here, Adam, is if you take a step back, what is going on that is discontent, distrust, frustration, even anger with mainstream established parties across western democracies. And we've talked about this, you and I on newscast many, many, many times. What has happened as a result of that? Voters have increasingly turned away from the mainstream to radical alternatives, populist alternatives, nationalist alternatives. And you have a slightly complicating factor now in Scotland in the fact that the SNP have been in power for 19 years. The iPhone wasn't on sale when the SNP came to power. To a certain degree, the SNP are their own establishment now and they new Scottish establishment. So that slightly complicates the picture. But the general picture stands that there's been a fragmentation of politics across the west and across the United Kingdom. We now have the situation where the largest party electorally in Northern Ireland is an Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein. We have the potential, as Felicity was just saying, for Plaid Cymru to be the largest party, a Welsh nationalist party in government in Cardiff, a nationalist party in the SNP still on track on the polls to win this election. I'm not prejudging this is that voters can do what they like and this may be wrong, but as things stand and then what some people identify as effectively an English or British nationalist party or suddenly a party rooted in those traditions, Reform UK potentially sweeping the border, doing very well in England. So an extraordinary fragmentation and a real challenge to the centre and to the mainstream parties, potentially depending on what the voters themselves and newscasters among them decide to do.
- [17:25]
Adam Fleming
And Joe, it's interesting. All year Chris Mason has been saying, oh, lots of the talk in Labour is about London and not just cause they're metropolitan elites or like just the fact there's a lot of Labour MPs in London, but the fact that London labourers battling on all fronts, on all kind of bits of the political compass.
- [17:43]
Joe Pike
Absolutely. So in central London, I think the Green Party are certainly a threat. If you think of. Of places like Hackney and Camden and Islington and maybe southern Lewisham too, you've got the Conservatives who might want to win back some of their big councils, places like Westminster or Wandsworth. Now, in, in Westminster parliamentary terms, London is pretty red with a. With A with a few Conservatives around the edges and Jeremy Corbyn is independent in the middle, but in the bottom left corner. So in the the southwest of the city, the Lib Dems and some quite affluent seats have picked up Westminster seats and want to lock in a lot of those gains. If you think about Wimbledon, about Richmond, Twickenham, those sorts of places, and reform on the edges of, of the city as well. Outer London. And I think they'll be looking at Essex as well. So London could be really difficult and it's very difficult for a party to try and shape their messages in terms of their leaflets or their door knocking pitches when you have so many different threats. And as James said, this is about how our politics has fractured.
- [18:59]
Adam Fleming
And Felicity, I mean, there are loads of polls about how people are thinking about voting in terms of their parties and then people extrapolate that on to try and generate a result. But in terms of what people are actually thinking about in terms of issues, have we managed to like peer into the minds of the Welsh people?
- [19:14]
Felicity Evans
Yeah, we've been out and about talking to people and of course the various polls. Pollsters also do these issue tracker questions, as you know. Adam, it's worth saying though, just as a sidebar before we get into that, that I do think, especially with this Welsh Senate election, that the seat projections really are a little bit sketchy, to be honest, because the possible permutations for the percentages that come out are really vast. I was talking to one polling expert who was saying there are a thousand different possible permutations of seats from one particular poll that we were talking about. So when people start trying to predict numbers of seats, I think that's when we really get into territory that we should say, okay, well, you know, let's not spend too much time thinking about that. In terms of the big issues, really, as I suspect is happening everywhere, cost of living is a really big issue for voters and something that they're talking about a lot. And obviously the war in Iran has had a major impact there. But in Wales, to be honest, the persistence of that as an issue for people is something that's been a real theme pretty much since the invasion of Ukraine, but starting to happen before that. Obviously, as we came out of the pandemic and there were all those pressures on supply chain starting to, to gear up again. And since then, really, people have taken hit after hit after hit to their household budgets. And in Wales, average salaries tend to be lower than the UK average, so people are earning less anyway. And things like the freeze on income tax thresholds, for example, which has the effect of pulling more people into paying tax over time or pulling people into higher tax brackets over time. That is having a disproportionate impact in Wales because salaries are lower in the first place, so there's a richer harvest of people. If you like that, you can start pulling into the tax regime. So there's all that sort of stuff happening. And another really big issue you here in Wales is the nhs. We've had real concerns around NHS performance, around waiting times for treatment, and particularly the Health Board in North Wales, which has had persistent problems for many years.
- [21:17]
Adam Fleming
We'll come back to the issues and the polling on the issues in a second. But James Felicity brings up the issue of income tax thresholds in Scotland because of devolution. There are loads of different income tax rates, aren't there?
- [21:29]
James Cook
Yeah. And this does actually relate right into those issues and to what pollsters, People are telling pollsters that they think are important at these elections because, as you say, public services feature highly in that. Immigration has crept up the list of concerns as well. But this is quite striking at this election, Adam, in 2026, this is the greatest extent to which a Hollywood election has not just been a public services election, but a tax and welfare election. Because, as you rightly say, in the past five years, Scotland has diverged significantly from other parts of the uk. There are. There is a more complicated system. There are more tax bans in Scotland than there are in other parts of the uk, and they are for middle and high earners under the SNP at higher levels. At the same time, there are more generous welfare payments in some regards in Scotland, both in terms of the way that disability allowance, which is now controlled by Holyrood, has been treated in terms of the generosity and the conditions and the likelihood of people and being approved for that allowance, it seems, seems that it's easier to get in Scotland. And secondly, with an introduction of benefits, including a payment called the Scottish Child Payment, which is designed to reduce poverty. And indeed, some experts, including the Joseph Roundtree foundation, says it has been successful in bringing down levels of poverty. So what you have now are two strikingly different visions, really, for Scotland, to varying degrees, for the snp, the Liberal Democrats, Labour and the Scottish Greens, their priority really is cutting poverty with a relatively speaking more generous welfare state and relatively speaking, higher levels of taxation on middle and high earners. And the parties differ on what those levels precisely should be or exactly how that should be handled. But that's their broad ideological position and Then on the other side, you've got the Conservatives and Reform UK who are running in Scotland and are doing pretty well in the polls, neck and neck with Labour at the moment arguing for a different approach, saying the focus should be on growing the economy and that they would improve lives by cutting taxes, cutting welfare spending and going for growth. Now, obviously you can challenge both of those positions, both in terms of politicians always say they'll go for growth and sometimes it's harder than they think. And is the welfare bill sustainable? Well, lots of independent experts say on the trajectory it's currently on, it's not. But that's the broad ideological divide along those issues in Scotland as these elections.
- [23:57]
Adam Fleming
And Joe, this is a bit of a thought experiment now, so I'm putting you on the spot, but okay, local authorities in England have got the power to increase council tax up to a certain level, otherwise they have to have a referendum on it. But actually, Rachel Reeves was suggesting in her Mays lecture the other day there that she wants to go further and maybe we'll have a situation where there's more of a direct link between local authorities and income tax. So not necessarily a Scottish style system where Leeds can have a different income tax rate. But she is toying with this idea of linking places and tax a bit more.
- [24:31]
Joe Pike
And certainly there are a lot of regional mayors, metro mayors, Adam, who want more money raising powers, want tax raising powers. So that is a sort of constant debate and a constant tension in terms of issues with the English local elections, though I think it slightly depends where you are. Certainly in Birmingham, I'm sure the bin strikes we've heard so much about over the last year may be a big issue for Labour. Certainly immigration reform has managed localise in its campaigning, talking about asylum accommodation, asylum hotels in different patches for the Greens. I think they are pitching themselves as a more radical left wing party than Labour. Certainly what Zach Polanski has said in the past week about being a very anti war party I think feeds into that, even though that's a sort of international issue that has nothing to do with, with local councils. The led Dems from my conversations are pitching themselves as the, as they have for decades, as sort of local community champions who are competent. And I think the Conservatives and Labour are left actually pitching themselves as professionals who have, they argue, run councils well. And will there be a slight national change with what's happened in, in the past few weeks on Iran? Certainly people within number 10 think that Keir Starmer's done well on that and he made the right Calls where they'd argue maybe other party leaders didn't, Therefore, could that perhaps feed into this? Even though when we're talking about council, we are talking about bin collections and
- [26:02]
Adam Fleming
potholes, What I find interesting about this current set of elections and at this stage in the campaign trail, is that we always have rules and advice and guidance about how we should cover the elections so that we're fair to all the political parties in our coverage on the news. In the past, it felt like you could sort of do national politics and you just covered national politics as we would always do it. And then there was sort of local and Scottish and Welsh election politics and that would be covered in a more kind of electiony way. But it feels to me that the fragmentation of the political system that James was talking about earlier on, plus the fact that all issues now seem to be connected in lots of different interconnected ways, it does feel that all our politics over the next six weeks is a combination of national politics, international politics and election politics, whether it's local authorities, whether it's Wales, whether it's Scotland. What do you think of my theory, Joe?
- [26:59]
Joe Pike
That is a very wise point. I think you put that well. And I think if you look at how the Labour Party arguably are framing this at a UK level, Keir Starmer spent three days, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of this week talking about Iran, doing stuff around Iran. He had on Monday, the business leaders meeting. Tuesday, Cobra Wednesday, he had that news conference. Absolutely no policy really coming out of that. Adam, why are Labour wanting to focus on that? Because they think that international affairs is something that is strong for them and it has dominated some newspapers and news programs, so they may be happy with that, even though it's nothing to do with the local council elections.
- [27:40]
Adam Fleming
Yeah, Felicity, I mean, I'm going to be honest here. I think maybe when the Welsh elections were on 15 years ago, and if the Prime Minister had done a press conference in Downing street about a war in the Middle East, I'm not sure we necessarily would have gone to Plaid Cymru for their views on what the Prime Minister had said. But on Wednesday, when the Prime Minister was doing it, we. We did. That's an example of how our politics is just. It's the. The bandwidth has expanded.
- [28:06]
Felicity Evans
I think I 100% totally agree with you. And you can't really, to be honest, we've sort of struggled with this. I don't know if you have in Scotland, James, it's a little bit different for you. I know, because the Scottish government tends to have broader powers over some of these things than the Welsh government does here in Wales. But over the 27 odd years of devolution, we've struggled sometimes to decide, you know, how do we demarcate what is a devolved issue and what is not a devolved issue. So, on cost of living, for example, which is obviously such a big issue for voters these days, so many of the levers that could potentially help or hinder that don't sit with the Welsh government, they sit with the treasury and the UK government, But voters. And why should they don't have those demarcations in mind. If they feel they are not being well served by a Labour government in Westminster, they may well take it out on the lake. Labour government that's been in power here in Wales. And similarly, if they feel that Labour having been in power here for 27 years uninterrupted, it means it's time for change, then they will execute that decision, if that is indeed what they decide to do. And I think all of the parties have been trying in Wales to come up with policies on cost of living that they can deliver. That's within their power to deliver, if you like. And some of the other parties, Plaid Cymru, for example, are calling for more power. So, for example, James was talking earlier about how the Scottish government can vary tax bands as well as tax rates. Well, that's not the case in Wales. The government can only vary tax rates. But Plaid Cymru is saying the tax rates that exist, the tax bans that exist, forgive me, are not suitable in Wales, where salaries are lower. So the Welsh government should have that sort of power here. But one thing that is in everyone's power, really, in this election is council tax, which is one of the biggest bills, of course, that households face. But we're not really seeing many of them wanting to grasp that nettle. We do have a revaluation scheduled in legislation for 2028, but obviously the next Welsh government could decide to dodge that if they wanted to. And really, the Greens are saying they'd like to see a land valuation tax, which they say would be fairer. But other parties, Labour, for example, saying they want a fairer tax reform. The Conservatives talking about capping it, but. And Plaid Cymru again, talking about making it fairer. But fairer is in the eye of the beholder. And that's a word that's doing a lot of heavy lifting right now in this election.
- [30:34]
James Cook
Felicity, to answer your question about whether we have that here, we absolutely do. And when the Parliament began partly because we thought we sort of had a duty to educate people. And I mean, right back in 1999, we spent a lot of time trying to say, no, Hollywood is for this, Westminster is for that. And I think we at the BBC realized over time that while we were trying to do a decent thing to try to just sort of explain how politics now work, the new politics, that voters didn't really buy that and that when it came to. I'll give you a couple of examples. So immigration's an example. You know, Border control's obviously reserved to Westminster, but the potential impact of immigration in terms of housing, education, health, doctors, public services, or the perceived impact of it, anyway, let's not get into the actual debate, but it's an example is one area where there's obvious crossover. The North Sea is another one. Oil and gas, you know, a lot of energy policy reserved to Westminster, but in terms of the transition from oil and gas to renewables and planning and jobs and so on, a big impact for Holyrood as well. So there's just a couple of examples where you just, I don't think, you know, you're right. You just can't say. There's this and there's that and another
- [31:49]
Felicity Evans
interesting thing for us. And again, I don't know whether this is something that's happening in Scotland, but we have some really big UK political figures who are not standing in this Senate election, but who are actually spending quite a lot of time here in Wales to try to give their parties a boost, even though they're not standing. So Nigel Fare Farage for Reform, for example. The Welsh leader is Dan Thomas, a chap who used to run Barnet Council in London actually, but he's a Welshman, he moved back to Wales a few years ago. But it's Nigel Farage who's coming for a lot of the big set piece events and sort of kicking them off before he hands over to Dan Thomas and similarly, Zach Polanski for the Green Party. The Greens are very hopeful that they will win seats in this Senate, an election, and they're feeling very buoyant given some of the polling numbers that they're getting. But again, Anthony Slaughter, who leads the Greens here in Wales, not a household name, Zach Polanski very much his is. And so Zach Polanski is coming and doing a lot of that heavy lifting for the Greens. What's not happening, of course, is Keir Starmer coming for Welsh Labour, because I think, you know, there is a feeling that given his low popularity levels, he's a Bit of a drag for Leonid Morgan, the Welsh First Minister and Labour leader. So that's not happening. But it's interesting how Reform and the Greens are deploying those UK national figures, even though they are not candidates in this election.
- [33:14]
Adam Fleming
Yeah, It's a good reminder that politics and personalities and just people's opinions don't necessarily conform to the demarcations in the textbooks. Not that that's an excuse to then talk about the Dehon method even more. Let's talk about, though, about. About issues of national identity. Because if you've got James, the snp, a nationalist party, rebounding in the polls, and Felicity, you've got Plaid Cymru, a nationalist party, jointly leading the polls. I'm just wondering, in Wales, for example, I mean, we'd call these issues constitutional issues. In Scotland, how often is just the nature of what Wales is and the powers that the Welsh. Welsh government has, does that come up on the campaign trail?
- [33:57]
Felicity Evans
To be honest, I think you struggle to knock on the door and have someone open the door and say, I demand that powers over the Crown's estate are devolved to Wales. Although that is something that certainly is talked about a lot by Plaid Cymru, for example, and indeed Welsh Labour.
- [34:12]
Adam Fleming
Just to interrupt, that's the. That's the lands around the coast that is owned by the Crown on behalf of the nation. And there's all sorts of things going on about who gets the money from leasing out the seabed for a wind farm. That's why that's important.
- [34:24]
Felicity Evans
Yes, absolutely, Adam. Yes. Yeah. So that is something, I think, that isn't necessarily impinging on people's consciousness in terms of how they're going to vote. They are worried about the issues like the cost of living, about how they're affording the next bill, about what sort of standard of education their kids are getting in school and that sort of thing. But certainly the political parties do have this push and pull about it, if you like. So James was talking earlier about how the British blocks are dividing up, you know, so the parties of the left, for example, Welsh Labour, Plaid Cymru, the Greens, the Liberal Democrats in Wales, anyway, for the main parties, and then we have Reform and the Welsh Conservatives on the other side, and Reform and the Welsh Conservatives accuse Clyde Cymru and Welsh Labour of being obsessed with constitutional issues that aren't important to ordinary voters. And of course, those parties push back and say, oh, but hang on a minute. These things determine how much money we have and how much power we have to make a difference to the lives of people in Wales. So that argument definitely happens. I think the question over how much it impinges on how the ordinary voter decides to vote is very much an open question, though. But interestingly, what we do find from some of the polling, you know, the Wales election study, when it's gone back to ask people how they voted and how they identify, how they identify themselves and sort of relate that to how they vote, whether someone identifies as British or Welsh, British versus whether they identify primarily as Welsh, does seem to have an impact, or at least it has in previous elections, on how they've voted across the political spectrum. So identity certainly plays into it. But some of these constitutional issues, I think, are not things that vote voters are going to put right at the top of their list.
- [36:10]
James Cook
Certainly here in Scotland, we have a slightly different version of the same argument. And you, Adam, and you, Joe, Both remember the 2014 referendum on independence, when Scotland voted by 55% to 45% to stay in the United Kingdom. What's happened since then, interestingly, is that support for independence, which has gone up a bit, the most recent polling puts it just above 50% on average. The most recent polls and support for the Scottish National Party, which, which many people for a long time had regarded as the, if it were ever to be delivered, the primary vehicle that would deliver independence. That makes it sound like it's like a pint of milk or a newspaper, but you get the idea. Support for those two have diverged. So although the S and P are potentially on track to do well in this election, they've not had a good couple of years. In the general election, Labour went from one seat to 39. The S&P fell from 48 to nine seats, and then they lost a by election in the Scottish Parliament as well. So what John Swinney is doing, the leader of the snp, the First Minister, is talking about independence in this election a lot because he is trying to narrow that gap. He's thinking, look, if we're on, say, 35%, the SNP and independence is on 50%, John Swinney's thinking there's some votes that I could usefully get back. So he is actually talking about it a lot. Of course, there's no obvious mechanism by which independence might happen. After the Supreme Court ruled during this last Holyrood Parliament that Holyrood could not unilaterally hold a referendum on independence. And all the major UK parties are saying that they would not agree to one in any circumstances, really. So it's a sort of. It's a strange debate about independence here. It bubbles up and it's there always under the surface, and there's a significant number of people who say they want it and a significant number of people who don't. But there's no one ever quite sure about how it might happen, if at all.
- [38:04]
Adam Fleming
Felicity, you're very politely raising your hand. In the old Brexit cast days, me, Chris, Laura and Katya, we just all talk over each other. So feel free to do that if
- [38:11]
Felicity Evans
you like, because I can't see you. So I'm not sure whether you. You spotted it. That's why I was. I was doing that. But just on that independence point, this is really interesting in Wales, and it's fascinating to hear what James is saying about the SNP pushing the independence point, because it's kind of the converse here at the moment. So we have. Of the six main parties standing in Wales, two of them are pro independence. So Plaid Cymru, obviously, and the Green Party, neither of them are really pushing independence as an issue in this election. The parties that are raising independence as an issue are the parties really who are trying to slag off those two parties. So we, you know, the reform, the Welsh Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and Welsh Labour are all trying to raise the issue of independence in the consciousness of voters and saying, these two parties will take Wales down an independent route. You don't want that to happen. The Greens and Plaid Cymru not really talking about it at all, though they have said, both of them, that they don't really see independence as an issue to tackle in this next Senate term, though Blood Cymru has said that they will perhaps set up a review to have a look at, to have a look at the pathway ahead on the issue. But they've both ruled it out as being something that they will try to bring on in this Senate term. So it's quite interesting the different tactics that the independence parties are taking in Wales and in Scotland, by the sounds of it.
- [39:40]
James Cook
There is a bit of. There is a bit of the other party that find it quite useful to say independents, if you vote for snp, in their view, it will be destabilizing and just focusing on the constitution and not fixing all the problems that the country has. And they accuse the SNP of focusing too much on independence over the past 19 years and not doing a good enough job in government with public services. And as Sarwa doesn't want to talk about that constitution, he wants to talk about public services, he doesn't want to talk about the Prime Minister either. That's a whole other question, Adam.
- [40:17]
Adam Fleming
Yes, and we saw him distancing himself from Keir Starmer quite dramatically a couple of weeks ago. Joe, I'll give you a closing thought and you can make it a closing thought from an English perspective or a UK wide perspective, or maybe both.
- [40:29]
Joe Pike
I suppose, if we step back. Adam, these are massive, complicated and could be hugely consequential elections. We're not just speaking about who has control of the levers of Scotland and Wales and, and every council in London and 5,000 different councillor jobs across England. We are also potentially talking about the future of the Prime Minister, whether it's fair or not. A lot of people will perhaps go into the voting booth and think about national issues in the Prime Minister, as well as their bin collections and potholes. It is still early days in the election campaign, but in terms of what a lot of political journalists in Westminster will be thinking about, it is what will the narrative and the headlines be on the morning of the Friday, Friday the 8th, and as that day and Saturday, with some counting on Saturday, progresses, how will Labour MPs in particular be feeling that weekend? Has Keir Starmer done enough with his leadership on Iran to hold onto the job? Is now a good time to challenge him? Maybe not, if there's so much global and economic instability. But I know political journalists have cleared those days in their diaries and also there are some political aides who work for potential leadership contenders who are clearing those parts of their diaries too, getting
- [41:48]
Adam Fleming
the phone lines fitted. Which is a very 1990s reference to potential leadership challenges.
- [41:52]
Joe Pike
Exactly. So, I mean, maybe it will not happen, but the potential for these elections being hugely consequential for the leadership of the country, you know, that's certainly possible
- [42:02]
Adam Fleming
at the start of these campaigns. I always find myself becoming a little bit nostalgic. And it's back to that point we're seeing earlier on, about the baseline of 2021. And it's just a reminder of how much churn and change there is, because in 2021, Boris Johnson was Prime Minister, was riding high because of the COVID vaccine rollout. Keir Starmer went on to win a massive landslide. Nicola Sturgeon was queen of all she surveyed, in a sort of rhetorical sense. She's leaving politics with a very different reputation now. There'd be no invasion by Russia of the east of Ukraine on a big scale.
- [42:39]
Joe Pike
A lot's changed in five years, but also a lot has changed in 18 months, too. That's the crazy thing. Are we just having a much shorter electoral cycle, because less than two years ago, when Keir Starmer took over, you wouldn't necessarily have predicted us to be even considering that his leadership could be under threat or that we could be seeing really difficult elections for him in Scotland and Wales.
- [43:01]
Adam Fleming
Although I always find them only nostalgic at the start of the campaigns because then there's a whole load of new facts that take over your brain and those old facts about old timers disappears. Right, Joe, thank you very much.
- [43:10]
Joe Pike
Thanks, Adam.
- [43:11]
Adam Fleming
James, thanks to you.
- [43:12]
James Cook
Thanks, Adam. Great to see you.
- [43:14]
Adam Fleming
And Felicity, thanks for joining us.
- [43:15]
Felicity Evans
It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
- [43:17]
Adam Fleming
And the plan is we will record new episodes of Election Casts. Love saying that word every Thursday, which will land in your newscast feeds on a Friday. But we will all be standing by to do extra election casts as and when might be necessary. And there'll be some classic newscasts heading your way after the Easter holidays. And in the meantime, you'll be getting a miniseries that Chris Mason and I have done, delving into the history and the issues at the Home Office. That's the Home Office, the government department, not where Chris does work when he's at home. So that's what will be coming your way in the newscast feed very soon. Bye bye.
- [43:52]
Felicity Evans
Newscast, newscast from the BBC. From one newscaster to another there, thank you so much for making it to the end of this episode. You clearly do, in the words of Chris Mason, ooze stamina. Can I also gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? Tell everyone you know and don't forget, you can email us anytime@newscastbc.co.uk or if you're that way inclined, send us a WhatsApp on 440-3301-239480. Be assured, I promise, we listen to everyone. It's 2009 and we're in the German mountains. A man straps himself into a car on the world's most dangerous racetrack. He whispers to himself, it's time to
- [44:49]
Adam Fleming
put my balls on the dashboard as
- [44:51]
Felicity Evans
he starts the engine.
- [44:52]
Joe Pike
In 15 minutes, he's in an ambulance, unconscious.
- [44:55]
James Cook
In 15 years, he's a billionaire.
- [44:58]
Felicity Evans
This is Toto Wolff, Formula One's most powerful team boss and the breakout star of Drive To Survive.
- [45:04]
Adam Fleming
This week on Good Bad Billionaire, how
- [45:06]
Joe Pike
Toto Wolff made his billions.
- [45:07]
James Cook
Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts,