Scotsman Daily Bulletin Tuesday 28 May

The Scotsman

1 year ago

Transcript

00:00 (upbeat music)

00:02 - Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's daily video bulletin

00:09 for this Tuesday.

00:10 My name's Dale Miller, I'm Head of News at the Scotsman.

00:13 I'm joined by our Westminster correspondent,

00:15 Alexander Brown and Alex.

00:17 An election campaign underway

00:20 almost to the end of the first week.

00:22 I wanna get your take on how you think

00:24 the leaders are performing so far.

00:26 But let's talk about the front page of the Scotsman first.

00:28 Quickly, natural that we're leading on the election.

00:32 The Scottish Tories are making their pitch

00:34 in their official campaign launch today.

00:37 Douglas Ross is speaking up in Perthshire.

00:40 He's talking in Pete Wishart's seat.

00:42 Pete is the SMP or the party's longest serving MP currently.

00:47 And there will be a fight in that particular constituency

00:51 for the SMP to hold that seat.

00:52 Douglas Ross saying an SMP defeat

00:55 could end the Indy push for good.

00:57 It's a bold claim.

00:58 It's certainly what Douglas wants to talk about.

01:01 There's some coverage inside and across scotsman.com

01:05 about independence and whether it will actually

01:08 be a key battleground in this election.

01:10 Alex, we've started hearing about policy

01:14 over the past 48 hours,

01:15 but I just wanna get your take on the election so far.

01:19 How do you think the two key leaders in particular,

01:23 Sunak Starmer and to an extension of Swinney, are performing?

01:27 - Well, I think when it comes to conservatives,

01:29 you don't necessarily need my analysis.

01:31 We can just have Conservative Party HQs

01:34 after a leaked memo revealed that MPs were being sent

01:38 around a private email sent to MPs.

01:40 It wasn't supposed to be sent to Tory MPs,

01:41 but it was essentially criticising them

01:44 for not getting behind the party enough,

01:46 not doing enough to big up Rishi Sunak.

01:49 Ministers were openly cited for being critical of policy

01:51 on the broadcast waves as it was being announced.

01:54 So the general mood among the Tory party

01:56 is despair and denial.

01:59 Rishi Sunak started with an announcement

02:01 in the pouring rain that he explained after

02:04 was about looking like he was ready to get on with it

02:07 and the man for the job,

02:08 but in actuality, he looked unprofessional.

02:11 Yesterday, he was filmed doing football drills

02:14 with children and almost fell over the football.

02:17 It's not been good.

02:20 For Labour, there's not much they need to do.

02:24 The polling is so extraordinary for the Labour Party

02:26 that the criticisms coming at them from the Conservatives

02:29 tend to be more personal rather than about

02:32 what a Labour government might not actually do to Britain.

02:35 So far, we've had one of the chairs of the Tory party

02:37 called Kislama sleepy,

02:40 aping the language used about Joe Biden in America

02:43 by saying he's lying in bed

02:44 while Rishi Sunak is out on the job.

02:46 And then again, repeating it a few days later,

02:48 saying, "Oh, he had an extra half an hour in bed again.

02:52 "He's clearly not fit for the job,"

02:54 which is not really a rhetoric that cuts through.

02:58 I think Labour are in a pretty confident place

03:02 where the burden is not on them.

03:04 Even though they're the ones trying to win seats,

03:06 it almost feels like they're defending a lead.

03:08 They just kind of need to focus and get on with it.

03:11 And as for the SNP,

03:13 I mean, the Michael Matheson stuff came at a terrible time.

03:16 And I think there is real excitement among Tories and Labour

03:19 that the SNP are there for the taking now.

03:23 The fact that he was flanked by so many allies in the SNP

03:27 and defended as he came into the chamber

03:29 has really ruffled people.

03:32 And I think it's a terrible optic

03:33 to the SNP haven't quite realised.

03:34 So, the SNP are in trouble,

03:37 they haven't worked out how to deal with Labour,

03:38 and Labour are incredibly confident

03:40 and they're right to be so.

03:42 - Alex, my thoughts on political photos with sport.

03:46 Be careful if you can't play the game,

03:48 then it doesn't always end up looking good.

03:51 Look, policy, we know that things have shifted slightly.

03:56 We were talking about national service

03:58 across Sunday and Monday.

04:00 Some were calling it an unfunded gimmick.

04:02 It was a policy from Sunak

04:03 in their first big one of this campaign.

04:05 And now pensions is the talk today.

04:08 Just tell me about what the Tories and Rishi Sunak

04:11 are saying they'll do around pensions.

04:13 - So, essentially with the triple lock,

04:15 they're going to raise the income tax threshold

04:18 for pensioners so that they just simply won't get taxed

04:21 on income tax.

04:22 They're calling it triple lock plus,

04:24 which is presumably something they've workshopped.

04:26 And it basically means earnings will continue to rise

04:29 and the pensions will be saving money.

04:31 The Tories say it means by 2025,

04:33 the average pensioner will be saving £100 a year.

04:37 And by the end of the next parliament,

04:39 this will be £300 a year.

04:41 They're also, 'cause Labour have said

04:43 they will not stick with this.

04:44 They've said the Labour Party,

04:44 I think they've called it, and I've written this down,

04:46 they called it a retirement tax.

04:48 So they've come up with a new policy

04:49 and Labour not backing it now means it's a retirement tax.

04:53 But it's worth noting this costs billions of pounds,

04:56 billions of pounds.

04:58 It's another handout to pensioners

05:01 after the Tory party have said to the teenagers,

05:04 "You don't work hard enough,

05:05 we're going to make you do national service."

05:07 And I also think, having gone through the finances

05:09 and looked more analysis of it,

05:11 I don't think it necessarily holds up financially either.

05:13 Institute of Fiscal Studies said,

05:15 it's not going to deliver that sort of tax relief to pensioners

05:19 because they're not actually making that kind of savings.

05:22 The way they're doing it is they're just not implementing

05:24 plans for the crisis.

05:26 So half of this tax rise they're seeing off

05:30 would have come from the crisis

05:30 they were going to implement themselves anyway.

05:32 So it's a handout for boomers,

05:35 but it made itself onto the front page

05:37 of the Express and Telegraph,

05:38 which is exactly what as a policy it was designed to do.

05:42 - I know, but with both the national service policy

05:44 and this one, they're saying they'll fund it

05:46 through clamp down on tax evasion,

05:48 although a lack of detail exactly on how that will work.

05:51 Alex, just over the labour,

05:54 they've spoken this morning about a letter

05:56 signed by 121 businesses.

05:58 Clearly they, and Keir Starmer,

06:00 want to show that they have the backing of business.

06:03 Is that a fair assessment?

06:05 Is that why they're pushing this out?

06:07 - Yeah, I mean, if you think back to the year 2019,

06:11 when businesses were writing letters

06:14 saying if Labour wins,

06:15 that they'll have to pull everything out of the country

06:17 and condemning Corbyn in every single thing that they did,

06:21 it's a huge turnaround for where the party is.

06:23 And I think it's worth noting

06:24 that this isn't just businesses writing a letter.

06:26 This is the leaders of huge companies

06:29 that employ people all over the country

06:30 coming to the event.

06:31 Rachel Reeves is speaking today.

06:33 She will be speaking now as we speak.

06:36 And there will be businessmen there,

06:37 businesswomen there to promote the party.

06:40 And I think it's also interesting

06:41 that one of these businessmen

06:43 was actually trying to get a safe seat

06:45 for the Conservative Party.

06:46 There's a huge turn of supporters from the Conservatives

06:51 over to Labour among business.

06:53 And it was interesting,

06:55 'cause Sir Keir Starmer said in an interview overnight

06:57 that he was still a socialist

06:59 and he still remained committed to those ideals.

07:01 But the language that you hear from the Labour Party

07:03 is about fiscal straitjackets.

07:05 It's about following the financial rules

07:07 and balancing the economy.

07:09 They've tried to be this party of business,

07:11 which is exactly what Cameron and George Osborne

07:14 did so successfully to win a majority in 2015.

07:17 And it seems Labour are pulling from that playbook.

07:19 So it is working.

07:22 - It's interesting.

07:23 The messages from Reeves has been about

07:25 sort of talking national insurance

07:27 and protecting the levels

07:28 where it's out of their business again today.

07:30 So clearly Labour wanting to sell

07:32 their economic credentials to voters.

07:35 Alex, thank you very much for joining us.

07:37 You can read all the latest from Alex

07:39 and the wider politics team at scotsman.com.

07:42 Just follow politics in the navigation bar

07:45 and you can get us on all your socials

07:47 and for a full wrap of the latest day of election campaigning

07:50 pick up a copy of the Scotsman tomorrow.

07:52 Alex, thanks to you.

07:54 And thanks to our viewers for joining us.

07:56 (upbeat music)

07:59 (upbeat music)

Scotsman Daily Bulletin Tuesday 28 May

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