00:00You know, the kinds of threats that Putin potentially poses to Western Europe feel quite abstract.
00:07Now, that might be wrong, but it's definitely how people feel about it.
00:11You know, no one in the UK is walking around worrying about what Putin's going to do today, tomorrow.
00:17I don't think many people are walking around worrying about what Putin's going to do in five years.
00:20What they really are worrying about and what they're really putting pressure on politicians about is the lack of investment
00:27in infrastructure that we've had over a very long period about deteriorating public services.
00:33And there's a kind of an easy political response to this, which is to do what Kemi Bednock did, Prime
00:40Minister's Questions, what the Conservatives and the Reform Party always do, which is to talk about welfare spending, social security
00:46spending.
00:47They, of course, conveniently ignore that the proportion of GDP that's spent on such things hasn't changed or is very,
00:55very hardly changed over a really long period.
00:58So they're doing a kind of easy political answer of, oh, there's this unpopular thing.
01:05Let's go cut that. It's actually really hard to work out where the money is going to come from.
01:12And, of course, if we're going to be, as a society, a robust society against the pressures of geopolitical opposition
01:23and enemies like Putin, you know what?
01:27Actually, we need to have a happy society where everybody feels like they're getting a fair share.
01:32And I tell you what, that's not what people feel in the UK right now.
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