AI: Is Britain prepared?

0:00AI is moving fast. Is Westminster keeping up? Hello and welcome to Political Fixed from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. AI is getting smarter. It holds great opportunities, but also major risks, whether that's for jobs in the economy, the security, even perhaps human civilization. So why isn't it higher on the political agenda? And is Britain at risk of getting frozen out of access to the latest frontier models? On the show this week, we'll be getting into all that, plus the trade ban on goods from illegal settlements in the West Bank, the Met announcing a police investigation into reform, and Andy Burnham unveiling a new tourist tax in his latest step down the path to greater devolution. To discuss it all, I'm joined by UK Chief Political Commentator Robert Schumzley, Hi Robert. Hi Lucy. And Deputy Opinion Editor Miranda Green. I'm Miranda. Hi Lucy. Miranda Robert, I'll come to you both in just a moment,

1:05but first I want to kick off with a development that's causing real alarm on Whitehall. And for that Madamita Mergea, the FT's AI Editor, is also in the studio with us. Hi Madu. Hi. Madu, this week we've been writing about anthropic and a development that's put fear into the heart of officials. Tell listeners briefly what's happened and why it's important. So together we wrote a piece about anthropic, which is the largest AI company in the world today. It's coming up to a trillion dollar valuation. It's getting ready to go public at probably two trillion dollars. It will be the biggest IPO in history. It makes Claude a chapot that people might use. So they usually submit their models to be tested by the UK AI Security Institute, which is a world leading research organization. One of the only ones of its kind really in the world that's able to test these systems. But we reported that in their latest installation of this model, the latest release they didn't

2:07submit it to the UK AC, which is kind of unprecedented because of what we think is pressure sort of from their the US government, which sees anthropic models as sort of a national security asset at this point. Why specifically was it worrying that this latest model wasn't shared with them? So the particular model we're talking about is called Mythos 5.1, which is sounds very not QS. But it's sort of build as their most advanced model in cybersecurity as well as life sciences. So this model is able to do scientific experimentation, but also identify code vulnerabilities and essentially hack and also act as a defender. So given its most powerful model, but also that it was the first time since AC was set up that a major model release wasn't submitted to AC for testing. So it's both because the model is a powerful and important model. But I think kind of more importantly that this was the first time that they didn't kind of have that relationship that they'd previously

3:11had. And it comes right after the US government has shown that it wants to be more protectionist. By sort of applying export controls on on previous models that anthropic has released. So you can just see the the sand shifting here. So there are huge concerns that this could be a harbinger of things to come with the UK being frozen out of AC. This institute you described being able to test the latest frontier models. It also seems to me that AC perhaps along with deep mind that being found in the UK is a huge part of what allows the UK to sort of sit if not right at the top table than at least in the sort of high echelons of the nations involved in AI. We'd be at risk of sort of losing our position if AC begins to get cut out. Yeah, I think you know it's been a surprisingly successful innovation that's come out from the last two, three years. And it was a Rishi Sunak initiative right? Exactly. So it's only three years old and you know it's it comes in a world where basically all the innovation is happening in California. But when AC the AI security institute

4:16was founded it was sort of an experiment right because there's no laws that force the companies to submit their models to AC. And it's also sort of weird because it's in the UK and not the US which is where these companies are based. So you wouldn't expect it to work. But it did because of the sort of technical quality of the people that this institute managed to hire and it was sort of seen it was seen as an independent pioneer and really high quality research institute. And somehow even though it was voluntary they have really good relationships with these companies and that's actually part of the problem. It's all dependent on these relationships. That has meant both open AI and anthropic and Google deep mind have shared their models ahead of releasing them with the with AC. And that's meant that we have been aware in the UK ahead of time what the capabilities of these new models are. We've sort of had a glimpse into the future in that sense which no one else in the world has had. So it's really quite unique and we saw this with Mythos which

5:19was a model that anthropic released a few months ago at the beginning of the year which sort of it was seen as the most advanced cyber security model. And in that case no other country in the world outside of the US had any access and AC. So AC was the only sort of non-US organization. So yes I think if that relation those relationships start to weaken or there's pressure from the US government to restrict that in some way that does put us at a disadvantage here in the UK because we no longer have that access. If I'm allowed to say this our story really flew this week. It got picked up at Prime Minister's questions by Ed Davie the Lib Dem leader. There were Tory reform Labour front benches the Labor Chairs of the Science and Innovation Committee the Labor Chair of the Business and Trade Committee in Parliament who was sort of raising concerns off the back of this. But Robert I think one of the reasons it got so much pick up is it coincided with a slew of interventions by people linked anthropic basically suggesting the end of the human species might be

6:23night because of AI. It's interesting in a way that this week the subjects blown up but here to fall it really hasn't been that high up the agenda in British politics do you agree? No I do agree. I mean I think we have to be careful not to get overly show vanistic about this issue because although obviously there's a concern what happens the I security institute in Britain I mean the broader point is these models are being developed and they're coming and you know we are ever ever closer to superintelligence we have frontier models that have shown their ability to break out from their sandboxes that's the thing that really matters I mean like although I think the AI security institute was a tremendous thing that Rishi Soonak did and that Andy Burnham's commitment to addressing AI is nothing like as impressive and it worries me the big issue is this stuff's coming and nobody didn't anything about what to do with it and it's development lies in the hands of sort of overgrown children who I don't entirely trust with our future and the thing you're referring to we've had whistleblower statements of people saying well there's probably a one in

7:24ten chance that it could kill us all with it a decade a decade some people say like one in ten that's not that high I don't know how many activities you'd engage in with a 10% chance of death might be on the low side I think and so I think the bigger issues and I almost think a little bit like this about when we feel about climate change we we're all very very stoic in the face of something that's enormous coming towards us that with the decline of multilateralism no one knows how to ring about it you require an engaged America on the multilateral field we don't have one China is advancing with great speed but it's still behind to actually benefit from a moratorium or a pause which is why America doesn't want to give us one so the bigger issue is the world's politicians have no idea what to do and what they're dealing with Maddie just just tell us how seriously we should take the suggestion that will all be annihilated within ten years this is not the first time that we're hearing this even from an employee of anthropic let alone others we had Jeffrey Hinton the Nobel Prize winner saying this a couple of years ago I've covered AI for more than a decade now and I've heard this sort of this talk about existential

8:31risk almost as long as I've been writing about the development of the technology itself and within Silicon Valley they have like a mathematical term for this which they call P Doom which is the probability of doom you know it's very self-explanatory but because they love putting numbers on things so this is very reassuring they actually felt the need for the term I know exactly and this is how they socialise what's your P Doom number not even joking they must decay the terror exactly and socialise it right anyway but 10% isn't even that high in in that bubble you know Sam for instance Sam Ottman's P Doom is probably the highest of anyone and I don't even want to get into what that might be but it's it's more than 50% possibly so all of these people have been anticipating doom for a long time in terms of how seriously we take it but I think the reason this has had lift off this week in particular is because there have been some recent incidents that show us that AI is becoming increasingly more sophisticated Robert

9:32mentioned the breaking out of the sandbox basically we found that they were able to come out of their guardrails or their sort of prison that they were meant to stay in and hack into third parties without the knowledge or permission of their owner which was opening I opening I had no idea and then they boosted about it on social media didn't they well exactly it was just like it's so powerful I mean I think but now that shifted shifted the debate a little bit where more people are starting to be concerned about what actually can these models do and so yeah I think it's hard to engage with the number of whether we'll all be wiped out within 10 years but I do think we should take seriously the possibility that there will be harms that we don't have an idea of how to control Miranda I mean there's a big debate going on on whitehall isn't that about regulation whether to follow the US laissez faire model or the EU high regulation model or sit somewhere in the middle but if you do seek regulation the issue of compulsion comes about and we saw with all the arguments

10:33about social media encryption it's quite difficult to bring the tech companies to heal and one of the big dangers is they think well it's not worth it for the economic upside of having specialist models for the UK that fit their their country and therefore we won't bother and then we'd lose access to it altogether there are so many considerations for lawmakers well well it's so so interesting that this AI security institute was set up under soon act because if we are so hard because there's been so much going on the last two years but if we cast our minds back to that period one of the things that was used in act was so keen on was taking advantages of well what he called the advantages of Brexit are he being outside the EU and being able to set our own course in the parlance and part of that was to say we're not bound by EU strictures on future technologies and it's really Britain's chance to be you know a hub and to sit in this sort of almost sort of proto blareite wears a bridge between Europe America Asia as well and to be the

11:35referee and it's sort of interesting that the UK's tried to be that referee when as Robert says there is no legal structure and it's a very difficult thing to pull off but I definitely think that the kind of fear factor around future technologies has taken over in the public imagination in recent months beyond sort of the idea of opportunity you know when you look at the potential impact on jobs and on safety and now these sort of doom you know word Madu then I think sort of politically it's much more of a defensive posture for the political class I think this kind of talk of opportunity has sort of gone a bit quite a few weeks there is something about the question you just asked Lucy which is basically this technology has a 10% chance of killing us and we're missing out yes exactly it's like it's like the nuclear arms race in a way you know because science is always about you know huge scientific innovation is often about slightly strange objectives but then you can have an advantage as a as a nation if you're ahead but at least with the

12:35nuclear technology from satellite imagery you can see who's enriching vast quantities of uranium we can't really see behind closed doors I mean just moving away from the um uh existential risks Robert the economic threat posed by AI to the economy again I I'm just surprised I don't hear more labor MPs talking about it it's the trades union congress coming up next week perhaps we'll hear a bit more about it there but driverless cars are coming we've had a glimpse of some sort of briefing from those around Burnham that they are concerned about what that will do to to the many cabbies and Uber drivers and so forth but it feels it just doesn't have a lot of grist in whitehall and the problem is we still really don't know if you talk to our colleague Sarah O'Connor who's really put a lot of work into this she says that the spectrum possibilities is very large it could be utterly catastrophic for the job market or it could be not that catastrophic for the jobs market and people adapt and and move on so part of the problem I think is that we still don't know we're certainly seeing if you look at youth employment and impact on a knock on where entry level jobs

13:40are proving harder to get but I do think it's some politicians have an engagement and one of the other problems which we haven't engaged when we think about this is that if you think about it's often likened to the industrial revolution and if you think about the industrial revolution over a landscape of a hundred years rather than over five or ten years this fundamentally altered everything beyond the economy industry also it altered our politics it led to the gradual enfranchisement of people are changing the voting structure new political parties new political alliances and I think you have to think about the possibility that if this technological revolution is as vast as that and it's going to happen much faster you have to also think about the impact this could have on politics just to offer you a simple example one of the fundamentals of the industrial revolution and the reformat which followed is the creation of a substantial middle class who are the bulwark of society and keep support for institutions and have their interests that are aligned with the wealthy if all of a sudden this vast middle class is unemployed or can't get the jobs it wants to suddenly find itself economically disadvantaged well that has

14:45huge knock on consequences for the nature of our politics and the stability of the country so it's amazing we're not talking about all of this more I mean I think what's really notable is yes it's hard to predict and and Sarah and others John Bernmandeaukas will have done great work looking at the data and showing that it hasn't changed dramatically just yet but the companies themselves are loudly warning that they they expect to see huge unemployment and you have people like Samultman and Dario Amadai the leaders of the companies putting forward proposals for universal high-income as they call it not basic income because they think there'll be a time when there'll be so much sort of large S and riches generated by AI that we won't have jobs but we also won't need them and we'll all just I don't know they always give the examples of you can go to and hang out at the beach I feel like there might be a bit more sense of I don't know sort of doom amongst us if we suddenly have no purpose and we don't you know there's as you said like a large scale change in how society operates if none of us are going into work and and the government I think it's really

15:48interesting that the British government isn't paying that much attention to the jobs question because we could sort of start thinking now about what could happen can we start modeling out scenarios different scenarios in which you know the different sort of levels of unemployment and what would be the impact of that and the consequences and think a bit more deeply about it because they're warning and they they are sort of calling for more government intervention both in the US and internationally I think also if you start looking at some of the campaigns locally against data center building and the tech lash in America yeah I think that's coming to our politics quite fast as well and the next general election there'll be a lot of it and really strange unholy alliances actually from people who are scared about different aspects of this tech revolution some of it slightly eccentric and some of it based on very real fears about the labour market and you know disenfranchisement of false suites of people who previously could could could rely on good employment prospects life long I mean it's just it's three of these spectacles we have these people the people

16:51who run these corporations the people are the drugs the drugs the certainly saying well it could kill you it'll definitely make you unemployed you guys should do something about I mean yeah a point I was saying as you earlier it does seem very immature the way that they think about the power of what they're creating well it's I think it's because of the speed of how quickly they've accrued power right and it's so concentrated among such a small group of companies and people there's probably a couple of hundred people in the whole world who really understand how this stuff works and to be in that position where you know you or you think you know more than basically everybody running the world it's kind of a big burden but but also they think they know more than they do because it's this fallacy right if you if you're an expert in one thing you suddenly like Elon Musk think you know about everything and so we're in this position where they sort of think talking about policy and jobs and whether people should have more children or not they just they just talk about everything their experts now so obviously we're talking about the risk of

17:55this technology leading to the death of us all why are the companies still pursuing this technology primarily money you know they've they have had billions invested into them and now that's got to pay off but I think there is also you know they all Dario and Demis has sabis who leads deep mind these were they were originally scientists and so there is this kind of push to build something the greatest invention that humanity has ever done and that sort of idea that we could make something that's even more intelligent than ourselves I think a lot of them are sort of they want to extend their lives they they talk about uploading their minds onto the internet it's just part of this kind of way for them to increase their power and their longevity and make a mark it's it's a very weird thing but there's a lot of them who live within this bubble it's kind of the myth of Prometheus isn't it there's always been this tension and suspicion about the scientific mindset just push and push and push to the extent of what's capable to achieve even if you risk destruction

18:59I think that tension's always been there and they'll just push it as far as the science will go and they yeah but I mean I guess not to be to sort of play the other side there are huge benefits that could come from this as well and that's what they like to do not death not death forever life I mean I'd like to look at the more short term things but there are risks in the short term as well we've talked about employment and bias and such but but there's also yeah there's health care there's scientific advancement not just for the sake of it but when it comes to materials it could help us invent much more sort of energy efficient materials that could help resolve the larger questions with the employment change and even just you know we saw recently the huge breakthrough in the mathematics the Navier Stokes equation which is one of the like six most sort of inscrutable mathematical problems ever it's like a 200 year old problem and we've never been able to solve it and we have used AI in the last week to show that it's false I mean it's if we

20:03just take a moment to see how amazing that is that we like have been able to solve something that the most brilliant minds haven't been able to do for 200 years it's kind of exciting but yeah but that's kind of the other side to the coin well Madhu I know we'll be returning to this a lot in the months ahead find the way to you what's the next big milestone or sort of shock or circuit breaker in the AI revolution that you foresee on the horizon the big theme that people are worried about now is this idea of recursive self-improvement or RSI which is essentially you know AI models teaching themselves and improving themselves and you can kind of plot out what that means they are starting we're starting to see them building themselves and improving very quickly and they can do it much quicker than humans can so I think the big question in the industry now is like how do we control that because that sort of seems to be where if we lose oversight of

21:05that is is when we sort of break off and it becomes the agents versus the humans. Is it the big question in the industry though how do we control it or do they not want to control it? Yeah it's the what they've been doing all along which is dual which is building as quickly as they can and then also very loudly well exactly and also just they just seem to have a motivation to just get as far as they can despite knowing what could happen but at the same time talking loudly about the risks of what could happen so we're sort of that it's coming and the question is whether we smarter people can intervene and think about regulation and control and yet. Well on that joyful note Lado thanks for joining. Thank you. So Robert a really significant pivot on UK foreign policy was unveiled this week Andy Burnham announcing a trade ban on goods and some services linked to illegal settlements in the West Bank accusing Israeli settlers of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the territory

22:12there's been a furious backlash from Israel and parts of the Jewish community in the UK. Heurously restrained response from the US though tell us more. It's really the do me episode. I'm afraid it is. After death through AI on a lighter note Israel Palestine. I think it's fascinating it's very clear and we knew this was going to come broadly speaking that ever since Andy Burnham won the Labour leadership and the Premiership that there was going to be a degree of a reset in their positioning on Israel and Gaza and Palestine because the Labour Party had gone a drift run a drift of its own support base on top of which the Loppendenley party actually felt they had got the policy wrong. And so we've been waiting for the moment where we see where this happens. An Ed Mellaban the foreign secretary has has leapt upon the issue of illegal settlements on the West Bank and in particular the violence that has been surrounding this as Israeli settlers moved in push Palestinians out of the areas they've been in and there's been very bad violence. The Israeli defence forces haven't been quick enough to stop this.

23:12So it's been a really really grim aspect of what's going on and it's also very clear cut for a government to say well we don't support these settlements we're very clear in our opposition to them. And also as Ed Mellaban said when he unveiled this plan of sanctions is that if you have any belief in a two-state solution and of course it looks more and more hopeless all the time the West Bank has to survive intact as a as a core part of the Palestinian homeland and what you're seeing with these settlements is the pushing further and further into the West Bank. So for that reason he unveiled these sanctions there's all kinds of questions about the efficacy of this and whether it will work but it got a fewest backlash from some places including the US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee from parts of the British Jewish community. They're interestingly other parts the progressive rabbis for example did not criticize it and so there's been a backlash to this but as you say so far we haven't heard anything substantiate from Donald Trump and indeed the Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a very measured understate response which essentially said

24:17well we've seen what they're doing we're probably not going to do this and I think some of the reason for this is that Ed Mellaban played quite an effective role convening role in making sure that a number of other countries specifically France and Canada who'd been looking at doing the same thing did it on the same day so this isn't just a British exercise. One of the things that was interesting which I heard when I was looking into this is although we can see the domestic political argument for this one of the reasons I think what they did this now is that they didn't want to be doing this after an Israeli election which had seen the defeat of Benjamin Netanyahu now there's a quite a little rifts in that but therefore they wanted to do this before in case there was a new government that you wanted to have a better relationship with but I do think it's been it's been a fascinating moment and it's also been fascinating to me as someone who's in the Jewish community to see the significant percentage of the Jewish community that is actually okay about this and is saying yellow what's going on in the West Bank's non-acceptable. But this is partly isn't it because Ed Mellaban was very careful to also

25:17explicitly condemn the kind of wider boycott Israel tendency which is quite popular in parts of the left so I mean he was very careful wasn't he to try and say this is very targeted on the illegal settlements and no wider but I do think it's a tricky moment politically because he'd be a fool in politics to ever search for pure motives right in this fallen world that we operate in and there is also a huge bi-election coming up in North London where they're going to be choosing the successor Kierstamer and the Camden seat there's going to be a concerted campaign to get Zagpilansky leader of the Green Party in as MP for Camden in that seat and they knew they had a huge problem with their with Kierstamer specifically his position on Israel and they had to do something very noticeable. I'm not saying that's the main main motivation but I do think that they will see it as a however. I mean I think they were well down the track before that bi-election was dumped on them but I think the bigger domestically

26:20countries was the Labour Party conference where there were motions coming down I mean you could tell I thought Ed Mellaban's speech to parliament was extremely clever and well calibrated even with the beginning as a proud British Jew which he only ever says when he's about to whack Israel more or less but I think they've played this quite well and there was a significant amount of support for the Jewish community in Britain and as you say Miranda support for Israel's existence so it was quite cleverly calibrated. I also thought Andy Burnham was quite canny in the way that he spoke about it during Prime Minister's questions it's the most impassioned I've heard him be at the dispatch box so far albeit he's been two weeks of parliament back since he became Prime Minister but I felt he has used it as a framing device as a repost to Tory leader Kimmy Badenock's claim that he's all about vibes rather than leadership on the one hand and that he's continuity stama on the other hand I think this is something he can bring forth to sort of say look it's not just words it is deeds and it's a clear shift away from stama's

27:23policy on on Israel so I thought that was interesting to watch yeah I think that's right but also I think Robert's point about trying to preserve the possibility some possibility any possibility of a two-state solution means it's about an issue of substance as well so it's I think that the opposition's accusations of gesture politics fall quite flat when you consider what's actually happening on the ground in the West Bank just to dig into the detail of their headline part of this reset robot it explain what the trade ban affects and how significant is this in the terms of UK's really trade well I mean I think the detail is going to be everything and one of things that Ed Millebain said is this could take six to nine months because there is a ton of detail it's very complex because at the headline level you're talking about any organization that does business in the West Bank settlements which are just to be illegal any financial services institution which helps facilitate them so that's an awful lot of things and one of the complaints

28:25from sort of Israel itself is well we're there so entangled how hell will this work are you are you going to wipe out every Israeli financial services it's going to be complicated and the detail will be very important and we're going to have to see it in terms of the significance it's an interesting one because Britain doesn't do that much trade with Israel it's not an enormous thing for Britain although there are some very important for example medical tech and even defense gains that we get from Israel what Israel gets from Britain is actually probably a bit less so it's more the global impact of this but I do think if they go through the detail and it's a sweeping as he implied that will have a major impact within Israel. Burlims also been talking this week about the tourist tax which we knew was coming down the line interesting decision not to cap it you know he's setting himself up for another row with the hospitality and leisure industry who are very angry about this but Miranda it does show he's

29:28serious about fiscal devolution by allowing local areas to keep the proceeds and to set the percentage themselves. Yes and I think also there's been some quite effective lobbying campaigns by the arts and culture sector who don't want to increase their own prices and for example the museums was one of the most popular things that the incoming Labour government under Blair Brown did was to make museums entry free and there's a lot of powerful people in that sector who've been saying we're going to have to go down the route of the Louvre for example you've introduced charges and so just tell us what does this tax apply to. I think it applies to hotels essentially and you get an Airbnb so you get charged a sort of supplement as a local tax and it is one way to go local authorities are really sort of starved of cash for all the important things that we know they need to do from pot holes to social care but yeah working the hospitality industry when they're down may have some uncomfortable backwash in the next few months I think. But I mean this is a rare

30:33market mechanism remember not putting a cap is it is effectively saying well you've got to see how far you can push this if you're a great city that people are flocking into like Edinburgh which you know where this is already put in place you could probably get away with squeezing your tourists and your visitors quite a lot other places that's going to be a struggle. So Edinburgh is 5% sort of the up to a maximum of five nights is that right exactly but I saw Amsterdam has a 12.5% charge on accommodation which seems pretty high for any UK city to attempt. But in the end I mean the market will determine this it will become clear if people have pushed too far and obviously the council will trans grab as much money as they possibly can because the only people not paying are their own voters but at some point it will become clear you've pushed this too far and we're going to see what that is. The other big development this week was the Metropolitan Police announcing that they are launching an investigation into reform over the Channel 4 sting which we discussed on the podcast last week. Miranda I thought there's a great roundup on on our website of the five financing

31:38scandals now engulfing reform and this is far from the only police investigation into the party it's becoming a big problem for them right. I think it's a big problem for them on many levels and politically we shouldn't forget that in the last generation in July 2024 that whole question of sort of poverty in public life and whether people are clean literally and whether they're perceived as clean became quite important in some electoral battlegrounds and I actually think the sort of build of these stories around reform and the money and the donors and the fundraising has sort of reached such a pitch that you can't not notice it and I think when we come to this analysis of the next general election and these negative voting patterns i.e. who do you most dislike and want to stop and how do you do that in your area. The kind of hygiene test on reform and on Nigel Frash personally is going to become one of those significant factors so I think politically this run of stories are bad for them. I was actually I did just want to share with you

32:42the most extraordinary quote the pre-breathing about the reform party conference which kicked off conference season already before all of that channel four sting broke somebody told the spectator the plan for conferences for the country to fall in love with Nigel again. Well that didn't go according to plan and they've actually gone. Did you fall in love with Nigel again? That's soup. But you know this hostility actually when you translate it into voting patterns in individual constituencies that's going to be a hugely problematic dynamic for them. I mean I think the interesting thing that I totally agree with Miranda said is there is is whether forage and reform can break out of their own bubble on this one a bit because what you see what you saw the reform party conference and what you see is the faithful the base they don't care about this stuff they're not that bothered the reform voters is holding up to what it was a few weeks ago we'll see what happens in the coming weeks and they're all standing there we don't care they're all dirty anyway who cares and also you

33:44have this attitude that said well you know we saw a happen with Trump everybody threw all this stuff at Trump and he's still won and I think there is a sort of self reinforcing bubble for reform when if you take a step back you say well the differences Trump was leader of the public in part they had a base support of 45% or whatever going into the election and he'd been president before and he a wider group of people loved him the truth about forage and reform is that while their vote has been holding up you now have 76 77% of people who've pressed an opinion are anti-reform and so that's more than the 24 23 who aren't and so this is where Miranda's point kicks in and I think a fundamental question also in my we don't know where the next election is but there are two possibilities probably for the next election one is it's an election all about getting rid of the labor government or this an election about stopping reform and at the moment it feels to me that that's the danger that forage has is facing and we've talked about this before on the pop but the challenge for him over the last year was to expand his base of support to broaden his

34:45appeal beyond the core and partly because of the threat from restoring for other reasons too they're going the other way and I'm not sure this is this is going to end happily for them and you're seeing the bolstering of chemi baytonok and the conservatives all the time the conservative potty vote hasn't really moved in the polls they're still in a terrible place. It's a little to be fair to that. Look what happened in the Manchester Marloty would look in fifth or something is it's hopeless chemi baytonok's own personality has risen so the question is can they take advantage of this opportunity because if you get the conservatives back ahead of reform in the opinion polls all kinds of unpleasant things will happen to reform. I do think baytonok goes from strength to strength and this week focusing on defense again when normally you see opposition parties sort of ricochet between campaign subjects and getting Burnham to say this line at PMQs to be fair I think it's something he wants to lean into that national security can't come at the expense of social security is a complete gift for the conservative party who are now campaigning heavily on cutting welfare

35:45in order to fund the military. I think it's it's going to be a quote that comes back to potentially horn Burnham for months. I thought it was fascinating because one of those quotes exactly as you said we won't put national security expenses socially because one of the things that will have played very well in the chamber with Labour MPs and they will have liked it and I thought but Andy Burnham was meant to be one of those politicians who could look beyond the chamber. And I was struck by how quickly he defaulted back into a crowd pleaser for Westminster rather than the wider country. I agree with you Lucy I think it was a trap and the tour he was so quick on it they press released his comment and their response and their sort of attack lines on it even before PMQs had finished which I thought showed that they knew they'd struck gold. It is a bizarre situation though that we've got three parties basically a loop trill and of more in common was pointing out when they released a new poll a couple of days ago three parties within the margin of error of each other and of being in the lead position

36:47is completely bizarre situation so you can't say confidently anything about the prospects of any of those three parties. Well it makes our jobs more interesting if it's a three-horse race as it increasingly seems to be rather than the two-horse race we've been talking about for months. It's not difficult to find out who it's easy to know what and where but why is harder? Why takes patience intelligence determination? Why takes over 700 of the best journalists in the world united by a fearless drive to unearth the truth? Why is difficult and more important than ever before? For the why? Financial times. We've just got time left for political fix stop picks. Simoranda, who's overvalued?

37:49Who's stock you dropping this week? Well so it was a huge week in the education world because the PISA study which is a big international study of the standard of 15-year-olds in lots of economies in reading maths and in science as well and England did really really well held up against a lot of other countries sort of on the slide but not Scotland not Wales and not Northern Ireland so it's a sort of proof that what's been happening in English schools for the last couple of decades with an extraordinary degree of consensus about it, secondary schools that really has worked for those important basic subjects. So I am going to sell Lucy Powell the new education secretary because this is not the sort of message that she's been putting out since she got the job. To my mind there's a bit too much we need to tear up the system and redesign it and start having people going down different pathways at 14 and all the rest of it and actually we know what works and we now have the international study to prove it and to deviate from it would be

38:54large bad decision. Robert? Well I was thinking of breaking out of our usual sandbox and the R&LI, the lifeboat charity which is yet again found itself under attack from reform supporting people for the fact that they rescue people who are drowning who happen to be immigrants and they've come up with their members of come under attack again this week but to stay back within the rules I am for the reasons we slightly discuss going to buy Ed Miliband who I had some doubts as to whether he is foreign secretary would work when it first started but I think he's he's played this last week extremely well he will have annoyed people but only the people he wants to annoy and doesn't mind annoying and the other thing he's shown which we all sort of knew is that he is just a major figure in this government and wherever he is he will drive policy he's not in this for the hell of it he wants to do things in government so he's shown he didn't get the treasury well he's going to the foreign office and he's going to drive policy there what about you Lucy? Well sort of the inverse I'm going to sell Angela Rainer the housing and communities secretary

39:57for the sense that she's becoming a very minor figure in this government there was a lot of fanfare around her coming back to cabinet after the debacle over her tax issue on a second home and you think in her department what with Burnham's focus on devolution that she'd be a major player but actually it's Louise Hague in the cabinet office Burnham's key fixer in forcer long time ally and of course John Healy in the treasury who are both really leading on devolution and it may be sit up and think when I saw Rainer's involvement in announcing tourism tax I thought blind me I've not thought about her read about her in weeks so I'm selling her. She's also had the reverse hasn't shown the council yeah and the councils where she's had to call off a number of the mergers of local authorities so another also a bad thing this week. That department's actually a bit of a hospital pass isn't it when you also think that she's now responsible for the housing target and how they meet that tricky we must come back to that on another episode but for now that's all we've got time for Miranda Robert thanks for joining thank you. And thank you for listening

41:05I've put links to subjects discussed in this episode in the show notes do you check them out there are articles we've made free for political fix listeners there's also a link there to Stephen Bush's award winning inside politics newsletter you'll get 30 days free and don't forget to subscribe to the show and please do leave a review or a star rating if you have time it really helps us spread the word. Political fix was presented by me Lucy Fisher and produced by Persis Love Manuel Sarragosa is the executive producer original music and sound engineering by Brin Turner our broadcast engineers are Andrew George Arzis and Richard Topping flow Phillips is the global head of audio we'll meet again here next week it's not difficult to find out who it's easy to know what and where but why is harder why takes patience intelligence determination why takes over 700 of the best

42:15journalists in the world united by a fearless drive to unearth the truth why is difficult and more important than ever before for the why financial times