00:00On those big announcements of the senior jobs in government, let's next talk to the political commentator and analyst Alistair
00:07Jones.
00:07Alistair Burnham has admitted that politics hasn't delivered for ordinary people for years, and not just in the UK, but
00:15far beyond.
00:16What does that actually mean, and can it be fixed?
00:21What does it mean? It means different things to different people.
00:24What it boils down to, though, is can I afford to pay all my bills? Can I afford to pay
00:29for a holiday? Are my children doing well at school?
00:32Is my pension going to be safe in school? A whole range of different things impacting among different people in
00:38different ways.
00:39Can it all be fixed? I think aspects of it are being fixed.
00:44The problem has sometimes been that the communication has failed dismally within the Stama government.
00:50So when they were actually, for example, increasing people's wages, so people were actually a little bit better off, and
00:56they were paying a little bit less in tax,
00:58it wasn't being communicated very clearly, and the things that were rankling dominated the headlines.
01:05So one of the things that needs to change is better communication of what is going on and how it
01:10is affecting people, especially when it's positive.
01:13OK, accepting the presentation is important, but we have seen a number of different Prime Ministers' promise change,
01:20but many of the same problems remain over decades.
01:24I mean, can you fix the UK's problems without pain?
01:28Without pain? Probably not.
01:31The question is how much pain, and how much pain people are going to be willing to accept in relation
01:37to what is going on.
01:38So, for example, Andy Burnham has talked about bringing back into the public sector a range of different industries.
01:46So, for example, the railways are gradually being brought back into the public sector,
01:50and there is talk of services such as the water industry being brought back into the public sector.
01:56Those sorts of changes could potentially cost the government a lot of money in the short term, but for a
02:02longer term benefit.
02:04So people's bills will not rise so quickly, they may even fall.
02:08The Scottish example is there where it is still in the public sector,
02:11and they've got the lowest bills and the best water quality in the UK.
02:15So there are things like that that can be done.
02:17Some of them are huge projects, such as potential renationalisation,
02:21but the consequences of the knock-on takes several years, potentially, for people to see the benefits.
02:27And sometimes people are not willing to wait that long, and that's the problem we've got in the UK.
02:31This is a centre-left party, a centre-left government.
02:35I mean, some will say the UK's fixes might involve cutting debt, cutting social spending.
02:42How uncomfortable might that be for this ruling Labour Party?
02:48It becomes very uncomfortable, and this is something that Keir Starmer failed to get through in his government.
02:53One of the things to think about with the welfare bill,
02:56the vast majority of that welfare bill is pensions, state pension provided to people,
03:02people who've paid in throughout their entire working careers to get a small amount of money back every month in
03:09return for those payments.
03:10So that is the largest part of the welfare bill, and that is out of bounds,
03:14which means that other areas suddenly rise to the forefront, such as adult social services,
03:19children's social services, unemployment benefit, personal independence payment plans.
03:26There's a whole range of different things there that could be up for grabs, but all of them, all of
03:31them will hurt.
03:33Alistair, good to see you. Thanks for that.
03:35The political commentator and analyst, Alistair Jones.
03:38The political commentator and analyst, Alistair Jones.
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