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This is an audio transcript of the Payne’s Politics podcast episode: ‘Zahawi £5mn tax scandal tests Sunak

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George Parker
Rishi Sunak promised a government of integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level. But his Tory chairman, Nadhim Zahawi, is still there.

Keir Starmer
Does the prime minister agree that any politician who seeks to avoid the taxes they owe in this country is not fit to be in charge of taxpayer money? (MPs shout “Hear! Hear!”)

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George Parker
Welcome to Payne’s Politics, your essential insider guide to Westminster from the Financial Times with me, George Parker, in the hot seat vacated by Seb Payne, just for the next few weeks before the pod is relaunched with a great new format.

In this week’s episode, we’ll be looking at the Nadhim Zahawi tax scandal and what it tells us about standards at the top of government and how Rishi Sunak’s mission to clean up British politics is going. I’m delighted to be joined by Jim Pickard, our deputy political editor, and Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe, the FT’s political correspondent, to discuss the week’s dramatic developments. And then we’ll be going behind closed doors at Chequers. Well, we’ll imagine being behind the closed doors at the PM’s country retreat, where Mr Sunak and his cabinet have been mapping out what his election strategists call a narrow path to a Tory election victory. Can they stay on the path or fall to the rocks below? Robert Shrimsley and Stephen Bush, our ace columnists, will discuss the prospects.

So Rishi Sunak’s been accused of being too weak to immediately sack Nadhim Zahawi, the Conservative party chairman, over his £5mn settlements with the taxman. The prime minister though says he’s just following proper procedure.

Rishi Sunak
The opposition can’t have it both ways. The shadow leader, he’s also his party chair. Both urged me and the government to appoint an independent adviser. And now he objects to that independent adviser doing their job. It’s simple political opportunism and everyone can see through it. (MPs shout “Hear! Hear!”)

George Parker
Well, Jim Pickard, what do we already know about the Zahawi case?

Jim Pickard
So what we do know now, which we haven’t known for sure for a very long time because he’s stonewalled us for basically half a year, is that there was a big settlement with HMRC worth about £5mn, of which we think £3.7mn was unpaid taxes. We think about £1mn or £1.1mn was a penalty and the rest is in interest. And that is quite a lot of money to be coughing up to HMRC. And what we think this involves is that when in the year 2000, Zahawi set up the successful polling firm YouGov with a guy called Stephan Shakespeare. They both were friends of Jeffrey Archer, the disgraced former London mayoral candidate for the Tory party. They set it up and Stephan Shakespeare took about 42 and a half per cent and another 42 and a half per cent didn’t go to Nadhim Zahawi. He took nothing! And out of the goodness of his heart, he gave it to his father, who lives abroad. And that has been held in an offshore entity called Balshore. And Nadhim Zahawi has always insisted this was kind of nothing to do with him. He’s just a generous guy who gives a massive stake, which ended up being worth £27mn, to his dad!

George Parker
He did get very useful advice in the setting up of the company, apparently.

Jim Pickard
Yeah. And people at YouGov don’t even remember having seen him around. But apart from that I’m sure it’s all very legit. But the HMRC takes a different view, which is it probably wasn’t that legit, which is why he’s ended up paying what we think is this £5mn.

George Parker
Do you think Mr Zahawi has lived up to the Sunak doctrine of transparency at every level?

Jim Pickard
So I’m starting to think that this phrase of Rishi Sunak’s is a bit like the great John Major phrase “back to basics”. And Major’s back to basics was kind of vague, but it became this thing on which you hung every moral, ethical, financial failing of major government. And this one’s much more specific. We’re going to have integrity, professionalism, accountability. And I think the thing that sticks in the craw with the Zahawi case is, you know, to have someone who was chancellor at the time and not only denied it, called it a smear, he also issued legal threats not only against journalists who tried to reveal that something was going on in terms of negotiation with HMRC, but also a tax expert called Dan Neidle who was very persistent on this.

George Parker
Yeah, absolutely. Now Jasmine, how do you think Rishi Sunak handled questions in the House of Commons this week?

Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe
I mean, it was quite a bruising prime minister’s questions because Rishi’s been put in a tricky position. He’s had to come to the dispatch box and essentially say to MPs, “Well, what I told you last week wasn’t exactly right. New information has come to light”. And at the point where Zahawi’s refusing to resign, Rishi just has to stand there and defend him. I actually thought some of Starmer’s attacks were quite effective and that he aligned Rishi’s inability to sack Zahawi and the fact that this question over what taxes were paid and what happened. And he hasn’t got to the bottom of that. And he aligned that with what’s happening in the NHS and what’s happening in the prosecution service and trying to paint a picture of a government that is entirely out of control. And so you can tell Rishi was trying to appear robust. He was arguing that yes, it would be more politically convenient to get rid of him, but I’m trying to take a more straightforward approach from having an investigation. We’re going to do this properly. But you could just see him squirming. And I think that would have really made a lot of Tory MPs question. Probably made Rishi reflect as well, because it’s not just Zahawi, it’s Dominic Raab. There are all these things in the background and you do think actually, is this individual credible, Is this individual able to withstand some of these scandals that are coming out of the woodwork?

George Parker
Well, it’s obviously very uncomfortable for Rishi Sunak because it allowed Keir Starmer to open up questions about his own family’s financial affairs and his wife’s status as a non-dom.

Jim Pickard
The fascinating thing about Rishi Sunak’s wife is that she agreed to start paying certain taxes in the UK, but she is still a non-dom, which means that should her and Rishi get run over by a bus tomorrow, the kids still wouldn’t pay whatever it is, £200mn of capital gains tax.

George Parker
So, Jasmine, do you think that the prime minister was right to refer this to this new independent adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, who was appointed after many months of delays?

Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe
You can understand the logic of doing this because you did have a period over the summer, over the final months of the Boris Johnson administration and the Liz Truss era, where we didn’t have an independent ethics adviser. And it added to that sense of chaos and added to the sense that this was a government that was really going from crisis to crisis. And so Rishi’s argument is that if this is a government of integrity and professionalism, then we do have to have due process, we do have to have these matters looked into. But it does feel a little bit like kicking the can down the road. You can’t have a party chairman. You can’t go on the broadcast round and answer questions about being asked about his own tax affairs. And it just feels like there will be a point where Nadhim Zahawi has to step down. But, you know, it just delays it further.

Jim Pickard
Can I just say, I think there’s something deliciously British establishment about the fact that when you turn for an ethics adviser, you turn to an investment banker. (Laughter) I have lots of beloved friends who are investment bankers. I wouldn’t consider any of them models of moral probity.

George Parker
I think you went to Eton, though, Jim, which I think is probably . . . 

Jim Pickard
Oh, in that case . . . (laughs)

George Parker
 . . . a key consideration. But I would wonder, Jim, whether you think there’s already enough out there for Rishi Sunak to sack Nadhim Zahawi.

Jim Pickard
Yeah. I think if he wanted to get rid of him, then of course he can. If he’s embarrassed by having a senior minister who’s coughed up £5mn to HMRC over unpaid taxes during a cost of living crisis, he can do it. And I think, you know, he’s this very popular guy with Tory MPs but for Labour it’s just an open goal which will run and run and run because they can just keep pointing at the sky and say, you know, £5mn may not be a lot to you, may not be a lot to the prime minister, but it’s equivalent to a £5,000 pay rise for a thousand nurses, believe it or not.

George Parker
Yeah. And also one of the things that the party chairman has to do is send emails out to party members soliciting money for the party, which probably doesn’t look quite so good. And the potential donees look at his own financial affairs. And Jasmine, this isn’t the only investigation underway into Rishi Sunak’s top team, is it?

Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe
No. So you have the ongoing investigation into Dominic Raab looking at his conduct towards civil servants. You also have the investigation into Gavin Williamson. Obviously he resigned, but that’s still ongoing. And you also have a couple of investigations that, while they don’t relate to individuals inside Rishi’s cabinet, they’re also still relevant. So if you look at Boris Johnson, you’ve got the privileges committee. We also know that BBC chair Richard Sharp is going to be investigated and it does add to the air of sleaze that Labour are very keen to press. And I think part of the issue is, is that when Rishi came into power, he wasn’t able to bring any young, charismatic, rising stars with him. He had to look back to the party and find these individuals who have ministerial experience but have a lot of baggage. And what is quite striking when you look at the allegations against Raab or even Zahawi, it relates to actions before they were even appointed by Rishi Sunak. And so essentially it’s almost got nothing to do with Rishi, but ultimately Rishi is the prime minister. He appointed them and so he is being dragged down by their scandals.

George Parker
I think we’ll have of course known some of the back story of this. And I mean, take another minister you didn’t mention who’s Suella Braverman, who he appointed as home secretary just a short time after she was forced to resign for leaking secret cabinet papers to Tory MPs. So it’s true that a lot of this is the backwash from the Johnson regime. But, you know, these are ministerial comments made by Rishi Sunak.

Jim Pickard
Yeah, and if I can just talk for a second about the Raab allegations and of course he disputes the veracity of some of these, but we’re talking about civil servants who in one case someone talked about being physically sick in the morning before going to work for this guy, that someone else, he felt suicidal. And these are serious, serious allegations.

George Parker
They’re serious allegations which Dominic Raab, of course, denies. I just wondered Jim whether you think there’s also a bit of a pattern emerging here of Rishi Sunak sort of procrastinating on tough decisions, as Jasmine’s just been describing there, before inevitably bowing to what was obviously gonna happen in the first place. So I’m thinking back to the way last year when he was chancellor of the exchequer, the way he consistently refused to contemplate a windfall tax, which was a Labour party policy, when it was blatantly obvious to all of us that eventually he was going to have to do it. And of course he did. All the row about Marcus Rashford and free school meals. You could see that in the end they were gonna have to get in on that and yet they incurred weeks of bad publicity. Do you think there’s a bit of a pattern emerging?

Jim Pickard
Well, what the Labour party is repeatedly saying is, is the phrase weak. Sir Keir Starmer is trying to make the world think that we have a weak prime minister and the evidence for that is things like the rebellions before Christmas over planning over renewable energy. And he just keeled over almost straight away. It’s almost as if he wants kind of a quiet life. But the problem with being prime minister is you can’t just give in to every pressure group, for example, backbench MPs. And I think at some point he’s gonna have to define himself a little bit more and show vision for what he stands for. There was a great Robert Shrimsley column earlier this week where he used the phrase about, you know, brutish political instincts and how Rishi may be lacking them a little bit compared to his predecessor. Because whatever you think of Boris Johnson, he did have an awful lot of political nous.

George Parker
Yeah. And Alastair Campbell, of course, the former press secretary to Tony Blair, would always say that if a story is gonna dominate the news cycle for days and days and days, just anticipate it and deal with it. And the problem with the Nadhim Zahawi case, of course, is that this could drag on for weeks depending on how quickly Sir Laurie Magnus, the new ethics adviser, does his work. And you can feel the support for Nadhim Zahawi sort of draining away from some of the briefings we’ve had this week about, you know, the fact that (inaudible) you were blindsided by some of the revelations. So Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe, I just wanna finish off by asking what is apparently a bit of a trivial question here, which was something that Keir Starmer said at prime minister’s questions. This is a clip of it.

Keir Starmer
Is he starting to wonder if this job is just too big for him? (MPs shout)

George Parker
Now, the question I’ve got to ask you — and I just took that at face value — but a lot of people in the press gallery kind of said, oh this was a jibe at the physical stature of the prime minister. What do you think?

Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe
Yes. And I thought it was quite a cheeky remark, but I think it did touch upon the fact that what the Labour party are trying to emphasise is that you have a tired administration. Yes, you have new leadership at the top, but you have figures who have been in government, have run out of ideas, have run out of steam, aren’t able to grapple with the severity of the problems that the country is facing. And so I think it was quite clever. You can see on the Tory backbenches that, you know, look like the colour drained out of their face and Rishi didn’t really have an adequate response to that. And I think that will be a question that Tory MPs are asking themselves and the public will eventually have to ask themselves as we get closer to election day.

George Parker
I think Rishi Sunak hasn’t been too bad at prime minister’s questions. I think he’s mastered the format quite well. I think the problem for him is the substance that he’s trying to defend. But Jim, on that trivial point, do you think Keir Starmer was being sizeist towards the prime minister?

Jim Pickard
Yeah, I’m trying to work out what Rishi should have said. What about, “I may be small, but I have big bucks. (George and Jasmine laugh)

George Parker
I don’t think that would have worked. Jim Pickard, Jasmine Cameron-Chileshe, thank you very much.

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Rishi Sunak’s cabinet had an away day where they got to pick the brains of a conservative political strategist known for winning difficult campaigns, notably for Australia’s Liberal party under Scott Morrison and Boris Johnson’s Tory win both in 2019. Political strategist in question is called Isaac Levido and here’s how he explained those wins for Johnson and Morrison in an interview with a Canadian conservative advocacy group in 2020.

Isaac Levido
I think anyone who’s sort of practised politics in campaigns, if you’ve got a good candidate who does and says the right things and has good instincts, it makes sort of someone who has a job like mine a lot easier.

George Parker
I’m joined by Robert Shrimsley and Stephen Bush, our senior columnist. Robert, Isaac Levido was talking to the cabinet about a narrow path to victory. Can you just describe to listeners what the narrow path is?

Robert Shrimsley
Yes. I mean, the premise of this is that it’s been an absolutely chaotic parliament — Liz Truss, Boris Johnson — but that voters understand this government has been unlucky in two ways in being whacked with two huge existential crises: the pandemic and the Ukraine conflict. They understand it would tax any government. So that’s the grounding point for the Conservatives. Then you say, look, but for all these crises, the last couple of years, we’ve really governed quite well. Things are getting back together again. The economy is just beginning to get itself going. And you know, don’t let this left-wing Labour party come in and ruin it. You’ve seen Rishi, you know, he governed competently. Isn’t that what you want right now? And then you start winding them up about all the things about Keir Starmer that they instinctively aren’t comfortable with. And the truth is, all the polling shows that the public hasn’t got a positive fix on Keir Starmer in the way that they did have, say, with Tony Blair. They’re not frightened of him, which is a big deal, but they haven’t got a big appetite for him. So that’s the narrow path. But when even the party strategist is saying it’s a narrow path, you have a sense of just how narrow it requires everything to go right. And it still might not work, but that’s the path.

George Parker
How narrow is it?

Robert Shrimsley
Very narrow, in my opinion, almost impossibly narrow. But though it’s worth noting, although Isaac Levido has indeed notched up some very great successes, his last big election, I think, was the Australian election, where Scott Morrison was beaten by the Labour party and by quite an uncharismatic leader of the Labour party; though of course the parallels are limited because different electoral system. I am coming increasingly to the view that the game is up for the Conservatives, that although the public isn’t in love with Keir Starmer, they might start looking at Labour party more critically. You know, if the economy picks up and Rishi Sunak shows competent leadership, the public might change its mind on him. He’s only five percentage points behind Keir Starmer in the polls on who make the best prime minister as opposed to 20-something on the Labour v Tory one. But my instinct just tells me that the game’s up for the Tories, that the public’s had enough and it’s gonna keep being difficult for things like the Zahawi issue are always gonna keep bubbling up and that they can do their best, but they’re now, in my opinion, damage limitation rather than a victory.

George Parker
Now, Stephen Bush, do you think Tory MPs can stick to this narrow path or do you think they’ll find the lure of a death plunge too hard to resist?

Stephen Bush
You know, if we were talking about sides in a board game, you’d actually, I can see how the Tory side could win. But precisely the reason why the narrow path feels so implausible to me is I just feel like Tory MPs are going to self-sabotage. You can see them self-sabotaging this week, right, with the various rows about tax rises. Obviously, he should have sacked Nadhim Zahawi, but one of the reasons why he hasn’t yet isn’t he feels he needs to manage internal opinion in his own parliamentary party. Labour’s strategic instinct is to bring Rishi Sunak’s numbers down to the Conservative party’s level, and one of Labour’s advantages they all know that, they all recognise Rishi Sunak is the Conservatives’ best asset. Every week, Conservative MPs do this kind of, oh but actually has Rishi really turned things around so . . . Well yeah, you were polling in the mid-teens, now you’re polling in the mid-twenties. He obviously has done quite a lot for the party.

George Parker
Yeah.

Stephen Bush
I still don’t think they’re gonna switch to Boris Johnson but they will just do things that make his life difficult. They will make it harder for him to get back onto the sort of centre of British politics where they need to be to win the election. It’ll force them to, you know, talk on and on about small boats and other promises and they obviously can’t keep. And so I just, yeah, I just think it’s a death plunge.

George Parker
I think part of this narrow path involves tax cuts in the budget of 2024 so money ends up in people’s pay packets in April, a few months before the next election. But as you just alluded to there, there are a whole load of Tory MPs. You think that’s leaving it far too late? I mean, that tax row is looking very, very difficult for Rishi Sunak to manage, isn’t it?

Stephen Bush
So I actually think that those Conservative MPs are right. And then, I think having tax cuts close to an election, all of the sort of political science literature indicates that basically, voters go, “I’m not an idiot, I know this is a pre-election bribe, I know you’re probably going to unwind it”. And seeing as it seems unlikely that the public services will be in a better state, it means going into our election going, oh, those very scary implied cuts in Jeremy Hunt’s budget. Yes, we really are serious about them. You know, ultimately, if you want to have tax cuts, you have to have spending cuts. And it is pretty clear that the British voters do not want any more of those. So, yeah, I wouldn’t disagree with anything Robert said, but I would add then it would include them going, “Yes, we hear you on this. We’ve raised taxes, our spending is fixing the problems in the public realm. Labour will tax you even more because they’ve never seen a tax rise they don’t like”. But instead, they look set to go into a situation where we’ll be going, “Oh, I would love to have cut taxes more, but I haven’t”. And by the way, here are these big scary numbers about what the Tory victory means for the public realm.

George Parker
Yeah. Another famous Australian political strategist, Lynton Crosby, talked about knocking the barnacles off the boat. Are you quite surprised that Rishi Sunak hasn’t been a bit more ruthless in knocking the barnacles off the boat? I’m thinking here, particularly of Nadhim Zahawi and his tax affairs.

Robert Shrimsley
I mean, I think Nadhim Zahawi is going to go. By the time people are listening to this, he may even have gone. But I get that Rishi Sunak felt the need to offer the sort of appearance of due process of agreeing to an ethics inquiry before sacking him. Nadhim Zahawi is quite popular; although he didn’t do anything to support Rishi Sunak, there’s no particular loyalty. I think a more ruthless leader might have sacked him straight away. But politicians put on these Westminster goggles where they start seeing things from I can’t give a scalp to the media rather than the whole country’s looking at this and it looks ridiculous. So I don’t think Rishi Sunak has shown himself to have those sort of brute political skills that the most effective politicians have. The absolute instinct of where the jugular is and when to go for it. I mean, Boris Johnson had many flaws, but he had brute political skills. And you watch Rishi Sunak, interesting! I’m not sure you’ve got them. And the problem is it leaves him looking too often like a bit of a victim of circumstance. Like he was unlucky. The Labour party is calling him weak all the time as their main attack line.

George Parker
Mmm . . . 

Robert Shrimsley
. . . And it’s quite unfair, as much as he’s shown himself quite courageous at times, but as an attack line for the reasons Stephen outlined, it’s important and he’s playing into their caricature rather than against it.

George Parker
Yeah. Now Stephen, is there anything in the polls that you’ve seen that should give Rishi Sunak some hope?

Stephen Bush
Yeah. So I think the things which should give hope — broadly speaking, there is not a lot of enthusiasm for the Labour party. There is essentially no fear and you know, we all know not just the Labour party but the Liberal Democrats who of course can do real damage to the Conservatives in parts of the country. Fear of the Labour leader has been a huge factor in recent elections, but that absence of enthusiasm means that you kind of feel like, oh well, if the economy improves and public services look like they’re getting better, the Labour lead probably would come down quite a lot. And the other thing is, of course, that although Keir Starmer has been hugely influential in there not being fear of the Labour party, he has had to do a lot of things which I think have contributed to the image of him as quite shifty, which we see coming through pretty clearly in the polls as well. So I think those two things, the lack of enthusiasm for the Labour party, some kind of doubts about Keir Starmer personally, are the things I would take heart from were I Rishi Sunak.

George Parker
Mmm. One of the interesting things is the way that the Labour lead has looked quite solid, hasn’t it, since Rishi Sunak took over — sort of over 20 per cent in some opinion polls. Robert, you wrote about careless conservatism in your column this week. What did you mean by that?

Robert Shrimsley
Well, I mean, partly it was just a play on the fact that Nadhim Zahawi used the phrase; HMRC did too. That phrase, carelessness to describe his failure to pay several million in tax. But there’s been a carelessness around the Conservative party for a long time, certainly through the whole Boris Johnson; they’re careless about appointments, careless about the rules in terms of propriety, wallpaper in his flat, that kind of thing. Careless about the impacts of Brexit. Liz Truss was careless about the impacts of her Budget. Some of the problems that Rishi Sunak is running up against are the toxic effluent of the tides that are coming in from before. It’s just all coming in on his watch. There’s that famous old political phrase which I love quoting — an insult Disraeli used on one of Gladstone’s Liberal government. He looked at them across the Commons one day, said “Look, behold a range of exhausted volcanoes”, and I buy that all. You look at them, you just think, “You’re exhausted. You’ve been here a long time, you’ve run out of ideas a bit. You’re not quite sure why you’re there”. And I think the country can see that there is a government that deserves to be in opposition. And the only issue that takes you back to the narrow path is they haven’t yet decided there’s an opposition that deserves to be in government.

George Parker
So Stephen, The Spectator front cover this week is all about the word sleaze that Robert and I remember very well from the 1990s. Do you think that there’s a danger that word, which only seems to apply in Westminster politics, is actually gonna come back and bite the Conservatives again?

Stephen Bush
Yeah. One of the central advantages the government has is they are the government. They therefore seem more serious. And even small things like Rishi Sunak forgetting to do his seatbelt, which doesn’t matter, right? And in, I think, loads of circumstances you can see a prime minister who in better political weather being able to carry it off. But because everything is going wrong, it just adds to this sort of general smell of, “Oh, these people are a bunch of jokers. Prime minister can’t do his seat belt, party chair can’t pay his taxes properly, nothing works, can’t get an ambulance, police don’t catch any criminals”. It just adds to that kind of general sense of “these people are a bit of a joke”. I remember during the 2015 election someone who worked for Ed Miliband saying what was really worrying them is they said, “Look, on Mock the Week, Eddie’s crap has become the kind of, like, accepted joke”. And I said the fact that it’s entered the sort of bloodstream which is something that everyone accepts, I said that really freaks me out. That makes me think the polls are wrong. And I think that was true then. And I think the fact there were Tories that are sleazy and a bit rubbish, it’s become like almost like the muzak of British politics.

Robert Shrimsley
So on that point, one of my moments of the week, which I think’s been referred to already was Keir Starmer’s “The job’s too big for him” dig at Rishi Sunak. And one of the reasons I love that so much as a sort of piece of pure political theatre was a) you can see the measure of the attack, how it works. And secondly, it’s quite a snide dig about his size. And the point is when political attacks really work is when the public can look at someone and see the attack line manifested. So you look at Rishi Sunak, the job’s too big for him. He’s small, he’s slight, and the attack seems to hit home. And I thought that was fascinating because you can see how that digs in. It is also interesting to see Keir Starmer baring his teeth in such a way.

George Parker
Well, unusual, isn’t it Steve? You also made points about Rishi Sunak’s wife’s tax affairs. It was an incredibly personal attack on the prime minister, wasn’t it?

Stephen Bush
Yeah I think, one, it reflects their strategic imperatives and they have to go personal because he is their biggest concern, right? He is the biggest barrier to a Labour government. But I think one of the things that should be odd about Keir is he’s so used to being in well-run organisations and obviously the Labour party generally isn’t. Then when he doesn’t feel confident in his material, his staff, he kind of becomes that sort of weird, “I am a robot, please elect me”. And now that he feels he has a shadow cabinet around him, that he likes the aides who he thinks are good, you can see him coming to life of it. What I think is interesting also about how that rout’s being discussed, including earlier on this podcast, is that Keir Starmer is not that much taller than (laughter) Rishi Sunak, but I think the fact that everyone went, “Oh yeah, great, great joke”! rather than “Oh yeah” . . . 

Robert Shrimsley
You know, you’re taller than everyone. Everyone looks short.

Stephen Bush
But I think . . . (Laughter) But I think it shows kind of the way that the mood music around the Labour leader is changing and people, instead of going “Uh mate, you’re pretty tiny too”. They went, “Oh yeah, great, great line”. You know, the force is with him, right?

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George Parker
Stephen and Robert, thank you for joining us. That’s it for this episode of Payne’s Politics. If you like the podcast, we’d recommend subscribing. You can find it through all the usual channels to receive episodes as soon as they’re released. And we also appreciate positive reviews and ratings.

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Payne’s Politics was presented by me, George Parker, and produced by Anna Dedhar and Manuela Saragosa. The sound engineer is Breen Turner. Until next time, thanks for listening.

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