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Today, Laura, Paddy and Henry look back at the last parliamentary year with the summer recess on the horizon.
How have the main political parties fared a year on since the general election? And which of them would be top of the class in their school report cards?
Subscribe here: http://bit.ly/1rbfUog
For more news, analysis and features visit: www.bbc.com/news
#UKPolitics #UKNews #BBCNews
#UKNews
#BBCNews
Today, Laura, Paddy and Henry look back at the last parliamentary year with the summer recess on the horizon.
How have the main political parties fared a year on since the general election? And which of them would be top of the class in their school report cards?
Subscribe here: http://bit.ly/1rbfUog
For more news, analysis and features visit: www.bbc.com/news
#UKPolitics #UKNews #BBCNews
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NewsTranscript
00:00hello it's laura on my own in the studio and it's paddy in harrogate and it's henry at home
00:06what a lovely duet you are so as people head off into their non-holiday holiday the recess to use
00:14the technical term shall we today have a bit of a report card sort of situation as you know b b
00:20minus must do better a minus marvelous promise what do you reckon yes a school report card and
00:27i have a feeling i'm with two a students and that my my b and a level maths won't compete but yes i
00:34mean you've had just about everyone on your sofa you must have got a bigger sofa
00:37well we actually had it was very funny you wouldn't have seen the pictures because you
00:40were on the wireless but we had at the beginning we had four politicians all sitting kind of staring
00:44each other it's quite it was quite an image we had what's the what's the vibe between them i mean
00:49are they friendly and jokey well some some are and some aren't i would say used to have rachel
00:55reeves and jeremy hunt used to be very very pally and they used to make all sorts of jokes about
01:00ballroom dancing and things like that and then sometimes the chemistry is shall i say less pally
01:07but this morning we had steve reed the environment secretary nigel farage ed davy and kevin hollenrake
01:12all sitting there and i would challenge newscasters to come up for a collective noun for four
01:18male politicians in suits of a similar sort of shall we say fine vintage anyway shall we start
01:25then with the report card henry labour well i think what you had today with steve reed laura was um
01:32in one issue which you talked about with him uh water which is on his brief because he's the
01:36environment secretary um a sense of what labour has struggled to do in its first year i think which is
01:43give people a sense that it is fixing some of the things that made so many people feel at the end of
01:5014 years of conservative government that the country was just broken and not working and i think what
01:55they're trying to do with their announcement today or their promise really that they're unveiling today
02:01which is to have sewage pollution from water companies by 2030 is give a sense of energy and a sense of
02:08momentum but i think as with so much in their first year you know the question is whether the public
02:15will really feel that enough is moving in the right direction fast enough it was interesting though i
02:20felt that steve reed was trying to sort of inject a bit of vigor and kind of energy into what he was
02:25saying and he did say this morning you know i will be held accountable this is my pledge to you
02:30and i asked him if he would resign if the target didn't get hit we're going to completely transform
02:35that broken regulatory system so that we get more of a grip on what the water companies are doing
02:39so that i can say with confidence that this commitment i'm making will be delivered and i
02:44will be held to account for delivery so if you don't do you resign you quit you lose your job if
02:49that target isn't met well i'm making an absolute commitment and i'm committed to delivering it my
02:54intention assuming i'm lucky enough to still be in the same job in five years time i would love to sit
02:58here with you uh then laura and points to places like windermere and see how much cleaner they are
03:03than today we're turning a story of decline into a story of renewal but you but you have just put
03:08your job on on the line because you believe you should get it shouldn't it politicians come and say
03:12we're going to do things of course our job should be on the line if we don't i felt he was slightly
03:15upping the ante there and the other news story that he committed while he was on air was he suggested
03:20that the boss of southern water should not take his increased pay packet he said he implored the company
03:28to understand how that looked to his customers so that i imagine might get some uh bit of pickup
03:33as we would say in the news jargon henry they're heading to the recess with a mixture of policy and
03:39process headaches aren't they because no one can blame this labor administration that's been in for
03:44one year for the sewage in the rivers which makes the public furious no one can blame this labor
03:50government of one year for inheriting waiting lists along the lines that it has done but we're we're
03:56now a long way out from saying it's about the inheritance so you've got policy headaches and
04:01then in the past few days you've had the process headaches whereby they've been kicking mps off the
04:08uh locker room yeah and i think the kicking out of the mps which is really a legacy still of that
04:14extraordinary stuff we saw on the welfare legislation a few weeks ago uh is really actually a symptom of a
04:20bigger issue which is that they don't have a unified direction at the end of this first year
04:26you know i think at the end of this first year keir starmer's direction of travel and direction for
04:32the labor party and for the country is being questioned by his own mps like never before and
04:38what you saw with the suspension of four mps i think was an attempt to draw a line under that first
04:43year and tell his mps that he's not going to put up with that kind of ill discipline but if you don't
04:50see from keir starmer and his ministers a kind of energy and clarity of direction uh or and more to
04:59the point a direction that a majority of labor mps like or an overwhelming majority of labor mps like
05:04then i think you will see more ill discipline in the second and third and fourth years so the report
05:10card is obviously a must try better can do better and it's also must mix well with others it seems to me
05:17i think that's right and it's fascinating to just to remark that labor has problems with the public
05:26they have problems in parliament and they have problems with their party you know they they have
05:30a lot of problems and they have problems with policy too so that's a fourth p so we can't give
05:36them a p in the school report but i think that bridget philipson told us she gave the government
05:40seven out of ten for its first year and certainly if you ask the public looking at the polls i think
05:45they'd score them a lot less highly than that i think what we can say laura is that if we asked
05:52all of our labor party contacts who we talked to all the time privately off the record how they thought
05:58this first year had gone they would say they do say not very well and so we can say on their own terms
06:06the labor party is pretty displeased with their first year in government but that said they will
06:11always remember that they had 14 miserable years in opposition and they'll take one year of government
06:16over any day in opposition and as paddy you were rightly reminding newscasters yesterday they there is
06:23a landing strip where everything changes and in 12 months time actually the economy is on the turn
06:29labor is doing much better and things feel very very different for them so we turn to reform we look
06:36at the reform report card and arguably you can link the final couple of years of the tories
06:42to the first year of labor to say that the public felt pretty miserable under the last few years of
06:48the tories and kicked them out and gave them a historic drubbing you then add that to the first year of
06:54labor with its it's found it's very difficult to govern the country's not really got any money there's an
06:59argument over where to get it from and how to spend it so if you add that threshold together between the
07:04tories and the labor you get the advantage for reform whose pitch is always look at them those two
07:10they can't make anything work vote for us so um let's turn to the reform report card and and what did
07:16the pupil himself nigel farage have to say well nigel farage undoubtedly has been on a roll um
07:22for the reasons that you say i think he reckons there's a big gap in the market because people
07:26are disappointed by labor's first year after what you were describing a lot of disappointment under the
07:31tories so there's an opportunity and my goodness he stepped into it what is different now is that
07:37they are now running things reform is now running things and they also have been in the polls ahead
07:43for several months and they now get questioned in a different way so actually for the first time this
07:48morning it was interesting we interviewed nigel farage straight after we interviewed a cabinet minister
07:53which for news nerds that's the first time where we've done that actually so rather than putting
07:57the person from the less well-established party far away from the dis you know further away in the
08:02distance from the cabinet minister actually it was a very interesting experience to have them directly
08:07one after the other where nigel farage has clearly been prospering is by being able to talk and tap
08:16into people's anxiety and upset about the country and say everyone's rubbish where he was a lot less
08:22clear this morning was on how some of his plans might actually add up so for example with the water
08:28industry reform has this plan that they would nationalize 50 of the water industry if they were
08:35lucky enough in that day imagine it they were ever in office nigel farage a couldn't tell me how much
08:41that would cost but also b completely rubbish the other estimates that are actually already out there
08:46official estimates from the government and the government regulator so i think we saw this morning a lot of
08:52his sort of vim and vigor if you want to put it that way and some newscasters might not like that
08:56idea but we didn't see much clarity when pushed on a pretty straightforward policy your policy reforms
09:05plan is to take over half of the water industry because this is critical what i'm asking you is how
09:11much of our viewers money you would be prepared to spend on that because the credible estimate is
09:15it would be about 50 billion pounds well i think it'd be a lot less than that if you strike the right deal
09:20how much i don't know i haven't sat in the negotiations but a completely different mindset
09:25is needed so you don't know how much it would be in any ballpark one billion ten billion of course
09:31not we don't know what negotiations we're going to have but it doesn't need to be a big sum of money
09:36if you incentivize private capital to come in and do the job properly but private capital runs it
09:42at the moment and they haven't invested of course listen all sorts of people set up businesses and
09:48fail there are more business failures than there are successes this model hasn't worked let's get
09:53some new people in and i tell you what the money would come laura i thought what was really fascinating
09:57in your interview with nigel farage was when you put to him various things that had happened in councils
10:02that are now run by reform because if you talk to other political parties about reform's year they
10:11say ah well okay they've had a good year but now that they're running places it's going to be harder
10:16for them because they're going to have a record in various parts of the country that people are going
10:20to scrutinize and nigel farage tried to bat a lot of that away and say look i don't know i don't know
10:26i'm the national leader i don't know what's happened there you know you asked him about one particular
10:30mayor's pay rise he said i just don't know i just don't know and he kept saying that um and i think
10:36what might be uncomfortable for some you know in the labor party and the conservative party and others
10:42is that that may well work you know in the same way that national labor parties in general elections
10:48have not necessarily been punished for what's happened in particular councils in preceding years
10:53you know i i think a lot of uh mps in rival political parties are sort of consoling
11:00themselves with the idea that reform might make a hash of running particular councils and therefore
11:04fade away at the national level um obviously nigel farage is determined for that not to happen and
11:09i think it was quite interesting the tactic he took in response to that kind of questioning today
11:13it was interesting in terms of the report card you can get their mps into a london taxi all of them
11:20and that's a reflection say many people who are not even uh political uh politically minded of the
11:27mass of our voting system so they may very well have support but it's not translated into many seats and
11:32even the people in that taxi have been bickering so if we are doing a report card they need to mix
11:38well with others they need to mix better with others and also they need to do some exam preparation for
11:45questions from laura coonsberg and from others around our journalistic community because dame andrea
11:51jenkins was asked a straight up and downer which is you know might be on the geography uh a level
11:57do you believe in climate change to which she said no so um these are interesting fault lines aren't they
12:04they're really interesting fault lines and we asked that same question then to nagel farage who said
12:09well i do believe in it but i question whether or not it should be the reason to do all sorts of
12:15things to industry and to invest in green energy and all those kinds of things but it was shall i
12:20say something of a process getting him to a point where he would actually say yes i do believe in
12:26climate change and the point before people are screaming at this is not to make a silly sort of
12:29journalistic trick it's that a senior member of reform this week said i don't believe in that
12:34that and that scientific theory which is backed up by the overwhelmingly clear consensus science
12:41is the basis on which billions and billions and billions of pounds worth of taxpayers money has been
12:45is spent well i think given we have nigel farage talking about the climate there we should also just
12:51reflect on a political party who have the same number of mps as reform uk it's always important to
12:57remember that's the green party um i mean it's fair to say that though they had a similarly big
13:02breakthrough in terms of mps perhaps not quite in the sense of vote share at the general election
13:06as reform they have not had as big a year as reform uk but they do have a big leadership election going
13:13on at the moment which i do think will be quite pivotal you have two of their mps uh adrian ramsey
13:19and ellie chowns standing as co-leaders against a man who's not an mp called zach polanski who i think
13:25wants to take the green party in a much more kind of for want of a better word corbynite
13:30direction a kind of left populist movement which could very easily end up in some sort of alliance
13:36with whatever ends up being the new left political party that jeremy corbyn and zara sultana and others
13:41are working on i think that could be quite pivotal in shaping keir starmer's second year or the next
13:48year that's coming up because uh whereas the local elections we had this year didn't really have
13:55sort of inner cities for example in 2026 there are lots of areas where the greens would hope to
14:00make gains that will be having votes so do we say on the report card they they've got points for
14:07improvement but must must try harder it's sort of like it's a fight for them in the system because
14:13you're going to get a new party on the left albeit born in chaotic circumstances which might be jeremy
14:18corbyn we don't know so is are they being a bit nutcrackered on the left the greens yeah a little
14:25bit and i think it just depends whether they embrace what else comes on the left or whether they
14:31actually try to fight against it i think it will be a pivotal year for them coming up but i think this
14:36year you know hasn't really necessarily answered any of the big strategic questions that definitely do
14:40face them even if you know the fact that they have four mps in parliament would have been unheard of
14:46not so long ago at all so i'm going to enjoy stretching the school metaphor as much as i can
14:51on this uh newscast i know i think henry we're not sitting up straight enough it's like master o'connor
14:57mr o'connor you're just like get us to decline latin verbs or something well it's kind of it's more
15:02the fact that of all the pupils we've discussed so far there's one we must now discuss which is really
15:06putting its effort into foreign language learning so unlike the other parties we've discussed the lib dems
15:13have said that one of their big policies is they'll get growth by grasping brussels closer to the
15:20bosom this is true so ed davy has in the last few months the lib dem leader come up with a longer
15:25and longer shopping list of things that he would like the government to spend money on or he would
15:29spend money on if he were ever in power how would he pay for that i hear you cry well one of his answers
15:35is that the uk would rejoin the eu customs union which of course was something that was debated
15:43a lot during the brexit years it's not what either of the two big parties stand for and it's certainly
15:50not what reform uk would do but the lib dems think that is an option on the table and this
15:55is why ed davy believes it we've argued to have a much more uh growth orientated policy so you know
16:01i've been on this program before i think and talked about our proposal to have a new uk eu customs union
16:08which the eu might not give you and is something that might not necessarily be what the public wants
16:14so that's a possibility but it's a sketchy possibility i think it's very likely let me
16:19explain why the thing about trade is mutually beneficial so both sides have to benefit and the
16:25customs unions have been taken on board not just by uh people in the eu but other countries outside
16:31the eu in the way that we're proposing and that would be i think massive beneficial growth yeah
16:36henry uh it's interesting because in on the europe question this is the party i mean to be fair there
16:43is the greens there is the smp this is the westminster the largest westminster party arguing for a clear
16:50move back into the customs union yeah that's right and it is a clear point of difference uh with the two
16:57bigger parties labor and the conservatives uh even as sir keir starmer in recent months has given us
17:03much more of a sense of what he means by his reset with the eu and moved the uk uh into a closer
17:09relationship with the eu than the conservatives had established he still does not want to mess with any
17:14of those fundamentals of the uk's post-brexit settlement uh i.e you know customs union membership or
17:20single market membership i think the question for the lib dems at the end of this year especially
17:25because it's the end of a parliamentary year is they're the biggest third party i think in parliament
17:31ever certainly the biggest the lib dems have ever been they've got 70 odd mps and do they punch at
17:36their weight in the house of commons you know are they acting substantially differently to if they had
17:4240 mps or 30 mps you know i think that's a question that they probably need to dwell on over the summer
17:49whether there are ways that they can use their parliamentary strength more than they currently do to make
17:54arguments like the one that ed davie was making on the customs union this morning and why are they
17:58not hoovering up people's disappointment with the labour party because if you look at the polls they
18:02aren't really budging and they did have you know the biggest number of mps they've ever had as you
18:07say henry and they should be and ought to be a very very big parliamentary force in the way that perhaps
18:12they were under charles kennedy if we all go back to probably henry when you were at school
18:15school um and i mean that in a complimentary way not in a actual school oh yeah actual school
18:22yeah um when i was already a young reporter but you know they had massive punch and power then
18:28in parliament and i think at that time and newscasters i'm sure will correct me and maybe
18:32i will quickly go look it up but from memory i think they had about 50 mps or maybe 45 and they
18:37made a lot of noise and they made a lot of political running and we haven't seen that yet and we haven't
18:42seen them be able really in the polling anyway to hoover up some of labour's disappointment to
18:48their own advantage yes so the school report says uh ed's done well he's he's improved many of his
18:55results but we look forward to him reaching his full potential uh that's what we say i mean in a nice
19:01in a nice way so then we turn to the conservatives who we can say were nearly expelled uh from as well
19:08we can say they were expelled from from office uh they've had a bumpy time and the report card goes
19:14to the leader i suppose let's start with the pupil kemi badenock so it's an interesting thing if you
19:20talk to tories in the last couple of weeks henry i don't know if you've detected this i detect a bit
19:25more bullishness a little bit more optimism that maybe all isn't completely lost maybe kemi badenock is
19:34not near as damn it going to be on her way at some point long before the next general election
19:40you get more of a sort of ginger a bit more spice and excitement around the tories even though if you
19:46look at the polling they ought not to be feeling that yeah i totally agree i think it feels like
19:52things have moved a bit from a couple of months ago when that probably was kemi badenockson and a
19:57deer and it was hard to find a conservative mp who didn't want to talk about the possibility of
20:02replacing her most probably with robert jenrich it does feel like she's sort of found a way to
20:09bed in a bit more i think one of those simple things that she's chosen to do is just do more
20:15so there's been a few sort of big occasions in the house of commons where you would ordinarily
20:20expect the shadow home secretary or the shadow uh whatever it may be to reply to their government
20:25counterpart and kemi badenock has done to do it instead so she sort of stamped us authority over the
20:29the conservative party in that way they're starting to announce a bit more policy a bit ahead of the
20:34original schedule that she set out and i think that's the question going forwards now is whether
20:40come the summer or after the summer there's more that kemi badenock can say to give the public a sense
20:46of what this new iteration of the conservative party actually wants to do i because i think we're often
20:51talking on the newscast about the difference between policy and process and laura you're always
20:56reminding me that the voters want to talk about health waiting lists about the cost of living
21:01about the inflation rate about the mortgages the interest rates and we sometimes get obsessed with
21:07process so i just want to be a little bit obsessed with process because you two are seasoned westminster
21:12watchers one of the things i think our system in parliament does is it makes it much more straightforward
21:17for the opposition to know what its job is when the government's in trouble it's very much easier when
21:23they're expelling their mps and then they're in a pickle and their chancellor's in tears it's very
21:28much easier to know in a knockabout system what your job is and i wonder if that's what you've seen
21:33you've seen just as the labor sort of pr image has suffered kemi badenock and her tori image has
21:41improved in parliament because that's sort of built into the system yeah i think that's definitely part of
21:46it paddy and actually you know i know that a lot of people probably rightly think that prime minister's
21:53questions is a very old spectacle and the way that mps behave in it is very strange but i think kemi
21:59badenock has had a good few weeks certainly compared to how her performances were at the dispatch box
22:04before then and that has energized conservative mps because that's the main way they see her they sit
22:08behind her that week and they want her to sort of land some blows on keir starmer and perhaps because
22:14of what you say paddy because the government has been in particular visible vivid trouble
22:18that has enabled her to do so i think also just that she and her team have got in the same way
22:24that we've seen the government do it they've got a bit more into the rhythm of doing of doing the job
22:30you know the shock of suddenly being in opposition they knew they were going to lose the election but
22:33they didn't know what it was going to feel like they didn't know what it was going to be like to have
22:37so few colleagues they didn't know what it was going to be like to lose a lot of experience
22:41she didn't know what it was going to be like to be leader of the opposition where basically a huge
22:44part of the job description is having to be on telly and on the radio a lot of the time because
22:49that's how you get heard because you know newsflash most people don't watch prime minister's questions
22:53although henry i completely agree with you it is impossible to underestimate this importance of pmqs on
23:00the psychology of political parties even though for the public its importance is well you know week to
23:06week one week it might not matter at all but for the psychology of political parties pmqs is a massive
23:13junction every seven days but i think there's something else going on in kemi badenock's team
23:17i think there's just a bit of finding their feet and finding the rhythm and her finding the rhythm of
23:24actually what the leader of the opposition's job has to be which love it or loathe it is communicating
23:30with the public all the time um because they don't get hurt otherwise and she she was being lapped a
23:36month ago by robert jenrich who was doing this sort of smash and grab on social media uh following ticket
23:43people who aren't paying for tickets on london's transport system and she appeared to be less
23:48relevant in the socials than he did so i mean we have to say this is not a great report card yes well done at
23:54the end of term in what you managed to do but basically we still think it's trouble at school
23:59for you and we'd like to see improvements it would the head teacher would have to say did you ever
24:04think about being a teacher paddy i think you're enjoying this part i've just i i was a failed teacher
24:10actually and i'm just reading i'm remembering some of the awful things that were said about me
24:15and it's just it is terrifying uh but i think that's fair isn't it like um you know really it's not
24:20been a good report card for the conservatives i think that is fair you know don't forget they are
24:25number three in the polls and the polling position has gone down since the general election and they
24:30still face you know over the coming year a genuinely existential uh question uh because if that polling
24:40uh third place is reflected again as it very much was in the local elections this year in the local
24:46and national elections in 2026 which is to say scotland and wales then you know i think you will
24:52have more and more conservative mps wonder whether they are the last representatives of a dying party
24:57they certainly will it's all going to be so fascinating to watch paddy when you said you
25:01were a teacher were you really a teacher yes i was a failed teacher what do you mean well i tried
25:07to be a teacher after my a levels i was a i was an assistant and i was also an assistant in france
25:13and in so i mean i this is something this this is a failure i can own very closely with my own
25:18experience it's a very very hard job i did it very badly and i'm very sympathetic to all teachers but i
25:23do like the idea of this school report uh card that we're doing on newscast but i think probably
25:29newscasts are fed up with fed up and up with it uh what does recess actually mean henry um laura tells me
25:36it means work for mps yeah i mean it does they're not they're not i think generally on holiday
25:42throughout um although you know whereas in sort of a february recess or an easter recess they do
25:48get very annoyed as laura said earlier if you suggest they're on holiday i think in the summer
25:52recess they do tend to actually take a holiday uh often uh but yes i mean you know most mps do live
25:59in their constituencies and so you know if they're not on holiday somewhere elsewhere then they'll be
26:05collared non-stop by members of the public and that's why they say you know there's never really
26:09a day of of break for an mp and we salute everybody who goes into public service because
26:16goodness knows probably none of the three of us would do it so there we are shall we come to a
26:20close yes have a very nice recess yourself thank you very much same to the two of you
26:27henry youtube will you take any time off henry uh not for several weeks so you know people can
26:32continue to hear me on various bits of bbc output uh though i'm not sure what i'll be talking about
26:36because mps will be yeah thanks very much laura have a lovely time and we'll all meet again in
26:42september for now thanks for watching and listening goodbye goodbye goodbye
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