The new UK government announces its spending plans this week in a much anticipated budget. It must balances two big but apparently competing promises: no tax hikes for "working people" and a rise in p
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Much of the British political class and media don't seem to want to touch the issue Brexit,
00:06the elephant in the room ahead of the UK's upcoming elections.
00:10So let's take you through it.
00:11What is the state of Britain more than four years after leaving the EU?
00:17Polls suggest the British are fed up with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his Conservative
00:22Tories 14 years in power.
00:25Fixing the cost of living crisis and health care with the NHS are top priorities for voters.
00:34And what about Brexit campaigners' promise to reduce migration?
00:38The Labour Party's candidate Keir Starmer is promising change.
00:42This week on To The Point we ask, in a broken Britain, can a Labour government offer the
00:47UK a new start?
00:52Hello, I'm Clare Richardson.
01:02I'm thrilled to welcome our guest to our studio in Berlin.
01:05We have Nikolaj von Andartse, a political analyst at the German Institute for International
01:10and Security Affairs, Oliver Moody, Berlin correspondent for the British daily The Times,
01:18and Katja Heuer, historian and author at King's College London, joining us today with
01:22The View from London.
01:24So, Katja, I think it makes sense to come straight to you.
01:29How would you describe the mood going into these elections on July 4th?
01:33Well, there's certainly a lot of anger and disaffection out there, I think, you know,
01:39not least with the fact that these problems, some of which were mentioned in the introductory
01:44film, have been around for years and decades, you know, and there doesn't seem to be an
01:49attempt to sort of solve them as far as lots of people are concerned.
01:53Not everyone sees Labour as the obvious kind of, you know, way out of that.
01:58Many people vote Labour because they want change, but they're not entirely convinced
02:01that that will come.
02:02So there's a general sense of, you know, something needs to happen, something needs to change,
02:07and people aren't entirely sure kind of whether and how that's going to come forth.
02:11Yeah, so disagreement over how and whether that's going to change.
02:14But Oliver, do you think it's fair to say that most in the UK think that there is something
02:19fundamentally broken?
02:22We can put numbers, really clear numbers on this.
02:24So a couple of days ago, there was a survey of people in seven countries asking, how do
02:30you rate the general state of your country?
02:32And in Denmark, 25% said it was either quite or very bad.
02:37Sweden, it was 49%.
02:39Germany, it was 70%.
02:40But the absolute world champion was Britain, where 80% of the people felt that way.
02:45So there seems to be a very strong, very entrenched consensus that something has really fundamentally
02:51gone wrong.
02:52Now, one of the biggest changes in the UK has, of course, been Brexit four years ago.
02:56Nicolai, why do you think this has not really been a topic in discussion in the media or
03:00among political elites, despite the fact that it has been, had such significant changes
03:05in the UK?
03:07Well, I think it's due to the political situation.
03:08About 60% of British now say that Brexit has been a mistake.
03:13So the Conservatives find it hard to campaign on Brexit because it has not been a success.
03:18Even the Brexit voters, who are still for Brexit, think it was handled badly.
03:22And then Labour is afraid of talking about Brexit because they want to rewind the Labour
03:27voters who went to the Conservatives in 2019, who still regard Brexit as an achievement.
03:32So neither of the major parties has an interest, at least at the moment, to make Brexit a core
03:37part of the campaign.
03:38Now, for many watching, Oliver, given what we've just talked about, you know, I think
03:43an international audience might be asking, OK, if Brexit hasn't gone as planned, if so
03:47many people are disillusioned with it, why wouldn't Labour, for example, then campaign
03:52on trying to get the UK back into the EU?
03:54I think, in short, there are two reasons for that.
03:56The first is the public opinion is very divided.
03:59The surveys fluctuate a bit.
04:01Usually it looks like there's only 30 or 40 per cent of the electorate that thinks it's
04:04a good idea to rejoin the EU, and they don't want to open up that whole can of worms in
04:08the polarisation that we had during the referendum yet.
04:11The second reason, I think, is that the actual policy differences you could make in Britain's
04:17relationship with the EU now are very technical, and the average person's understanding of
04:23and enthusiasm for these, at the end of the day, rather kind of minor regulatory shifts
04:30is a lot lower than it would have been five years ago.
04:32All right.
04:33Well, let's take a closer look at the repercussions of Brexit, especially with regard to the economy.
04:39That's a big one.
04:40An independent analysis published this year found that Brexit is costing the UK 140 billion
04:45pounds.
04:46That's roughly 162 billion euros a year.
04:50The economy has shrunk.
04:51Many are feeling the consequences acutely in their everyday lives.
04:56Several years after Brexit, British residents are feeling disillusioned.
05:00Many people are struggling with the sharp increase in the price of food and housing.
05:05Companies are complaining about staff shortages and border controls, along with rampant bureaucracy
05:11and delivery delays.
05:13Britain has gone downhill since leaving the European Union.
05:18It's really gone downhill for everything.
05:21The NHS, the country's health care system, has been especially impacted.
05:26Doctors are regularly striking against poor wages and staffing shortages.
05:31It's probably very unfortunate for people who have missed appointments, but at the end
05:34of the day, if the staff aren't taken care of, then how can they take care of us?
05:39Seven and a half million patients are currently waiting for treatment.
05:44The Brexiteers promised that billions of pounds would flow into the NHS instead of Brussels
05:49has not been fulfilled, which has led to approval ratings for conservatives in power plummeting.
05:56This benefits the Labour Party, whose leader, Keir Starmer, is promising the British people
06:01change.
06:02But can Labour really change the country?
06:11Let's come to Katja for more of a diagnosis of what's going on with the UK economy.
06:16Katja, how would you assess the state of the economy now in 2024 compared to before Brexit?
06:24Well, when you look at what matters to people, the economy is always very high up, as is
06:30the cost of living, basically.
06:31And this is the main thing that people realize in their everyday lives, is that everything
06:36is just becoming so much more expensive.
06:38Even when you look at inflation rates just at surface level, that doesn't really translate
06:43into what this actually means for groceries, which has become disproportionately more expensive,
06:48the kind of day-to-day stuff really that matters to people.
06:51That's not entirely due to Brexit.
06:53I mean, there are obviously worldwide issues with inflation.
06:57COVID has a lot to do with that and other things as well.
06:59So sometimes it's just quite difficult to disentangle that from the actual impact of
07:05Brexit.
07:06But one way or another, people are basically feeling the squeeze because it was already
07:10quite tight even years ago for people to make ends meet at the end of the month.
07:14And now it's become impossible for many, many people across the country.
07:17Nikolaj, how would you disentangle this?
07:20How much of this, this cost of living crisis and the state of the economy, is down to Brexit
07:25versus things that are affecting the rest of Europe, like the coronavirus pandemic,
07:29like the war in Ukraine?
07:31I think the big difference is that something like the pandemic, there was one huge hit
07:35to the economy and then it started to recover.
07:37And Brexit is a constant drag on the UK economy.
07:40It affects competitiveness.
07:41It affects how companies can trade with the EU.
07:45And therefore, economists estimate that the UK is losing about 4% of its GDP gradually
07:51over time.
07:52And this makes it so difficult for the UK to recover.
07:56And I think the second point, and this is maybe the difficulty for Brexit here, is many
08:00people in the UK now blame almost all problems economically on Brexit, whether it's true
08:06or not.
08:07And this has contributed to this effect of Brexit being so unpopular in the UK.
08:11Even as you say, inflation, cost of living crisis, is something that also affects other
08:16European countries.
08:18But for the UK, Brexit comes on top of that and makes it even worse.
08:21Yeah, Oliver, do you agree with that?
08:23And maybe you can also paint us a picture of what this cost of living crisis looks like
08:26for people who you know in the UK.
08:28One huge factor that really doesn't have much at all to do with Brexit that we haven't talked
08:32about yet is the cost of housing, which is bad in a lot of Western countries, but is
08:41very particularly bad in Britain because of the tangle of regulations that prevent
08:45people from building, and also because of the mismanagement of fiscal policy under Liz
08:51Trust when she was prime minister.
08:53So their mortgage rates on my flat in London doubled in the space of six months.
09:00We were paying more than £1,000 a month more as a result of that particular economic crisis,
09:09which had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Brexit.
09:12So, so much unpredictability there for your average person.
09:15Katja, I guess the big question is, that you hinted at already, is can Labour fix some
09:21of these issues that the Conservatives have not been able to?
09:25Well, that is the big question.
09:28I mean, we don't really know, because the rhetoric that is coming out from the Labour
09:33Party at the moment actually sounds quite similar to what the Conservatives are saying.
09:38So there's a lot of talk about growth, economic growth, trying to basically create revenue,
09:43not necessarily directly through the raise of taxation, but to try and basically get
09:48the economy going and thereby increase the state's revenue.
09:52Whether that will come to pass, of course, entirely depends on whether they can create
09:55that growth that they need to make that work.
09:58If not, then they may either have to borrow money or raise taxes, both of which will,
10:02of course, have an impact on the economy overall.
10:05Yeah, Nicolai, I'd like to get your view on that, too, whether Labour has a plan in place
10:09that could do what the Conservatives have not.
10:11And also what Katja mentioned, I think, is important about how are you going to pay for all this?
10:16So Labour has a huge lead in the polls, around 20 percent.
10:19And so they're almost guaranteed to have a government with a probably very, very large
10:23absolute majority.
10:25And you could guess that would give them the breathing space to be more innovative and
10:29give out more radical ideas.
10:31But Keir Starmer has used the very opposite strategy.
10:34In London, they speak about a Ming-Wa strategy, where he holds this poll lead beforehand and
10:39is very cautious to say anything that might upset voters.
10:42And so he rules out any tax increases.
10:45He's very cautious on Brexit.
10:47And so, as Katja said, the economic ideas in the Labour manifesto basically boil down
10:52to we hope we can stimulate more growth by being a more competent government, but we
10:57will not say anything how we actually address the fiscal problems.
11:02And this will become a huge difficulty once Labour has this majority.
11:06And basically on day one, he will have to give the answers to the economy, to the people
11:10on how he will address this very, very tight fiscal space and still achieve growth for
11:15the UK.
11:16And until then, he's shuffling toward voting day, holding this really delicate vase in
11:20his hands.
11:21Oliver, I do want to talk about the NHS.
11:22This is also one of the things that when polled, the British say they really want to see an
11:27improvement to from the next government.
11:30Instead of Brexit, Boris Johnson had promised that leaving the EU would free up money that
11:34would then be reinvested in Britain's health service.
11:38Why has that not happened?
11:40Why has it not happened?
11:42Because the money wasn't freed up by leaving the EU.
11:45But it's also not entirely true that the government hasn't invested in the health service.
11:48Health spending has risen.
11:50And in fact, in international comparison, we spend about 11.3% of our GDP on the health
11:57service, which is not as high as here in Germany.
11:59But it's very high by the standards of rich countries.
12:03So I think you have to ask, really, what are the kind of underlying reasons why we're getting
12:07such poor results for what is a fairly significant investment?
12:10All right.
12:11So as we've heard, anger has been largely directed at the ruling Conservative Party.
12:16But I think it's important to talk about something else.
12:18Giving them a run for their money in the polls is a right-wing populist party featuring many
12:23of the same faces and names you might know from UKIP, which campaigned in favor of Brexit.
12:30Well, guess who's back?
12:33Mr Brexit Nigel Farage has returned.
12:36He's trying to enter the House of Commons with his new party, Reform UK.
12:41According to a poll, it's the second strongest party behind Labour and ahead of the Tories.
12:47Farage insists the Conservatives have failed to deliver on the promises made during Brexit,
12:52including limits on immigration.
12:55The only way to really fully restore sovereignty, to decide who can come in, who can stay, is
13:01by leaving that European Court of Human Rights.
13:04It is completely out of date.
13:06This populist terminology is similar to PM Sunak's recent statements.
13:11Our domestic courts will no longer be able to use any domestic or international law,
13:18including the Human Rights Act, to stop us removing illegal migrants.
13:23Sunak aims to deport refugees to Rwanda.
13:27Although courts had ruled that it's dangerous, Sunak's government responded saying Rwanda
13:32is safe.
13:35Now Farage is once again fishing for right-wing votes.
13:38His goal is to become prime minister in five years.
13:44Right-wing populism and immigration, will they shape British politics even more in the
13:49future?
13:53So Nikolaj, it seems that the only politicians in the UK still openly supporting Brexit are
13:58part of Reform UK.
14:00Can you put this party into perspective for us?
14:03For example, how does it compare to other right-wing populist movements that we've seen
14:07in Western Europe?
14:09So Reform UK is very similar to other far-right national conservative parties, I would say.
14:15They campaign, for instance, for very strict migration rules.
14:18They campaign against net zero climate policy.
14:22And I think the biggest similarity is that their main aim is really to take over the
14:26center-right position.
14:27So Farage's status aim is basically to become second in the polls, maybe not even get many
14:34seats in the House of Commons, but intellectually take over the conservative party and drive
14:39it further to the far-right and establish this as the only opposition to labor.
14:45And then this would give him the space to implement or push for his policies that he
14:49wants to get in the long term.
14:51In this election, Oliver, would you have expected to see Reform UK performing so well relative
14:56to the conservative party?
14:57I absolutely would.
14:58Look, I grew up in a rural family of, like, dyed-in-the-wool conservatives who regarded
15:05Margaret Thatcher as a saint and David Cameron as a dangerously wet liberal.
15:10And what I find interesting looking back is that they voted for previous Nigel Farage
15:15projects for the UK Independence Party, for the Brexit Party, without feeling that they
15:20compromised their identity as Tories, because they saw Nigel Farage as an instrument to
15:26drag their own party towards what they saw as more authentic conservative values.
15:31In other words, this has always been about moving the main center-right party in Britain
15:36to the right, first of all on the EU, then on net zero, and now increasingly on immigration
15:42and Russia.
15:43And, Katya, do you think, then, that we will see a bigger role of this brand of right-wing
15:47populism in the UK?
15:49Have they been successful in what Oliver is laying out?
15:55I think so, not least because they have Nigel Farage back.
15:58You know, what many people—the problem that many people have with the two mainstream parties
16:02is that they haven't got any personnel, really, at the top with any form of what you might
16:07describe as charisma, and Nigel Farage does have that.
16:11And so I think, you know, because they've managed to sort of drag him out of retirement
16:15or whatever it is that he was doing, they have now got somebody who's basically able
16:20to galvanize a section of the population behind him, and that will play a role.
16:25Now, a lot of—this is true not just in the UK, but in a lot of right-wing movements within
16:31Europe.
16:32One thing that came up again and again is immigration in the UK, reducing it, tightening
16:36borders.
16:37In fact, one of the biggest promises of Brexit, right, was that if the UK left the EU, it
16:41would be able to tighten borders.
16:43Nikolai, do you think that that promise after Brexit has been fulfilled?
16:47Yes and no.
16:48I mean, the ironic thing is that the Brexit referendum was about migration from the EU,
16:55and that actually went down.
16:56A lot of less people from the EU come to the UK, and many people from the EU have left.
17:01But what has risen is illegal migration into the UK to a very, very strong extent, but
17:07also migration from other parts of the world, like Hong Kong, Pakistan, India.
17:12That has also risen.
17:14And so right now, the net migration of the UK has reached figures that were never reached
17:19before the Brexit referendum, over 600,000 people per year.
17:23And that means for many Brexiteers who wanted to vote for Brexit to really control the borders,
17:29the exact opposite has happened.
17:31We have the small boat crisis, and even the Conservative Party, with all the Rwanda policy
17:37that Rishi Sunak tried to implement, has not managed to really control the border.
17:41And this is one of the core reasons why the attack from the far right is so open with
17:46Nigel Farage, but also people within the Conservative Party attacking Rishi Sunak and saying we
17:52have not really fulfilled our core problem of controlling migration and controlling our
17:57own borders.
17:58And Oliver, what is Labour promising here regarding migration?
18:02First of all, I hate to contradict Nikolai with his considerable expertise, but while
18:07the political focus is very much on irregular immigration, the increase that we've seen
18:12in immigration from outside the EU has overwhelmingly been regular Labour migration to fill unfilled
18:19jobs above all in the care sector and in the health sector.
18:23Areas that are really lacking.
18:25Even the Reform Party, in its manifesto, that is the right-wing populist party, admits that
18:32it would only try and curb non-necessary immigration, right?
18:36There is actually a kind of silent political consensus that our economy can only be sustained,
18:41that we can only pay for people to look after our elderly mothers or to sustain the NHS
18:47with a certain level of immigration.
18:50Not even of skilled Labour, but also of unskilled Labour.
18:52Does that play into Labour's platform this time around?
18:55I don't think Labour has taken any kind of very particularly strong positions on the subject.
19:01Are you?
19:03We've said that they want to shelve the Rwanda policy and that their aim is to get illegal
19:08migration under control by sort of tackling the criminal gangs rather than trying to establish
19:14this deterrent of the Rwanda policy.
19:16But they're also, I think, back again to this Ming vase strategy, very, very careful not
19:21to talk about immigration because that is one of the attack lines of the Conservatives
19:25saying, if you get Labour, you will get much more people to the UK.
19:30There was a very nasty advert by the Conservative Party where they showed somebody from Labour
19:35rolling out a red carpet at the British coast and saying, if you vote Labour, you will get
19:40lots, lots of more illegal immigration.
19:42So they're very careful not to talk about that, even if, as you said, legal migration
19:48is actually increasing and helpful for the UK.
19:51Because the numbers here are tiny, right?
19:53The Rwanda scheme, we're talking about maybe a few hundred people at most being deported
19:57each year.
19:59The obsession with the so-called small boats, smugglers bringing people across the Channel,
20:03that's 30,000 a year.
20:04That's not even 5% of the total.
20:06And so I think the political debate about this has been incredibly narrow in comparison
20:11to the kind of overall demographic changes we're seeing.
20:13So just to be clear, why make such a big deal out of this if it's a relatively small number
20:17of people coming?
20:18My theory here is that in the Brexit referendum and since then, it's not fundamentally for
20:24most voters been about the number of people coming to the UK.
20:27It has been about the feeling that they can exercise some form of control over who comes
20:32in.
20:33And what becomes very visible with irregular immigration, in particular with the small
20:36boats, is the fact that we can't control this.
20:38Yeah.
20:39Katja, I'd just like to bring you in here, too, and get your thoughts on what Nikolaj
20:43and Oliver have been talking about.
20:45Is that, do you share that same view?
20:47Well, I think it genuinely is a big issue for a lot of voters.
20:52So you see when you look at surveys that around two thirds of voters consider immigration
20:57as one of the big things that sort of keeps them awake at night.
21:02And that's been pretty stable, actually, for a few years now.
21:04So it is a big issue, which is why the Tories are keen to talk about it.
21:08But what they're not keen to talk about is effectively the dependence of the British
21:11economy on cheap kind of ready-made labour people who've already been trained to do certain
21:17things, particularly in the medical sector, and can then be sort of imported, if you will,
21:22into the U.K. without the U.K. industry having, or the economy having to train them themselves.
21:28And so this focus on the small boats is a way about taking immigration as a topic and
21:33talking about it, but not about the bit that they don't really want to do anything about.
21:38So you can still use this topic without really addressing why legal migration is still so
21:43high.
21:44Nikolaj, I just want to bring this full circle and get some final thoughts on what's ahead
21:50after these elections.
21:52Can labour be a new start for the U.K.?
21:54This is our big question.
21:55So I think, first, new governments are in pretty quickly in the U.K.
22:00So basically, the day after the elections, if labour gets a huge majority, Kirstame will
22:05be invited to form the government.
22:07But it will not be a Blair-style 1997 revolution where labour comes in with a plan to really
22:13turn the country around.
22:15I think the best line I would describe labour's current policy is, we want to do a lot of
22:21things like the Tories, but we want to do them more competent.
22:25And then Kirstame will try to very carefully readjust some of the levers of the U.K. public
22:31policy, address these fiscal circumstances.
22:35I don't think foreign policy will be a big issue.
22:37So even the U.K.-EU relationship, which we talked about in the beginning, labour will
22:41only very carefully address that.
22:43And really, the focus will be on tackling NHS, the cost-of-living crisis, with small
22:50levers and labour trying to convince the economy to invest more in the country.
22:55And this is what I think Kirstame will say on day one after the elections.
22:58And Oliver, where does this leave the Conservatives, then, assuming labour does roll to victory
23:03as the polls are showing?
23:05What do you expect to come next in the reckoning after?
23:07This is actually a super interesting and unpredictable question, I think, because the general default
23:12assumption is that they will draw the lesson from their defeat that they weren't far enough
23:18to the right, and that's why they hemorrhaged so many votes to the right-wing populists,
23:22rather than concluding that they lost it in the middle and they should have tried to fight
23:25labour for the centre ground, and that therefore it would get increasingly radical.
23:30You would have a right-wing leader, somebody like Swela Brafman or Priti Patel, who are
23:33the former Home Secretaries.
23:35But there are also analyses that suggest the complexion of the parliamentary party could
23:40actually be pretty centrist after the election.
23:44It could be radically different to what we've been used to for the past five years, in which
23:49case it is very possible that they could recognise quite quickly that the only plausible route
23:54they've got back to power is to appoint somebody who can try and win the battle for the centre ground.
24:00It would be interesting to see how that plays out.
24:02Katja, let's come to you.
24:05Is the UK, do you think, if you had to look into your crystal ball and make a prediction,
24:10what's happening next year in the UK?
24:12Will it see change, as Keir Starmer is promising?
24:16Or does Brexit have a role in fundamentally crippling it in what it sees in the years
24:23ahead in terms of its economy and its standing on the world stage?
24:30I don't think Brexit will necessarily play a huge role.
24:33I think Keir Starmer has already said, you know, that obviously he doesn't want to take
24:36the UK back in.
24:38He will try and tweak basically the existing agreements, be that on security or in on imports,
24:44exports and so on.
24:45But it will be incremental change, you know, so I don't think that the big thing that will
24:49dominate the headlines.
24:51I think for me, an interesting question is what's happening internally with the Labour
24:55Party.
24:56I mean, you know, this kind of Ming Vars approach that we've been talking about has also worked,
25:01you know, towards the inside, really, of the Labour Party, because that's very divided.
25:05And whether Keir Starmer can bring that together, the left and the right wing kind of wings
25:09of it, and then run the country with them remains to be seen.
25:12All right.
25:13So a political reckoning for both sides, it sounds like.
25:15I will keep an eye on the election results as they come out.
25:18I want to thank my fabulous panel of guests for your insights today.
25:21It's Nikolaj von Ondaatje, Oliver Moody and Katja Heuer.
25:25And to you watching at home, thank you so much for your attention.
25:27If you're watching on YouTube, drop us a comment in the comments section.
25:31I'm Claire Richardson in Berlin, and we're so glad you could join us today.
25:36Bye.
25:37Bye.
25:38Bye.
25:39Bye.
25:40Bye.
25:41Bye.
25:42Bye.
25:43Bye.
25:44Bye.
25:45Bye.
25:46Bye.
25:47Bye.
25:48Bye.
25:49Bye.
25:50Bye.
25:51Bye.
25:52Bye.
25:53Bye.
25:54Bye.
25:55Bye.
25:56Bye.
25:57Bye.
25:58Bye.
25:59Bye.
26:00Bye.
26:01Bye.
26:02Bye.
26:03Bye.