This video captures a reflective conversation about the tumultuous journey through an election campaign from pre-election predictions to the chaotic voting period, highlighting significant political and personal events.

The discussion covers the anticipation of elections, with predictions from the major parties, the uncertainty of their timing, and the uphill struggle of various political leaders to establish their readiness and leadership in unpredictable circumstances. They delve into unexpected political events, major party campaigns, leadership challenges, and the resulting consequences on public perception.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. slated [sleɪtɪd] - (verb) - Criticized severely and publicly. - Synonyms: (condemned, lambasted, attacked)

If he hadn’t been brave enough to do it in the rain, he’d have got slated for not being brave enough to do it in the rain.

2. status quo [ˈstætəs kwoʊ] - (noun) - The existing state of affairs, especially regarding social or political issues. - Synonyms: (current state, present conditions, existing state)

We were in a grinding status quo.

3. seismic [ˈsaɪzmɪk] - (adjective) - Relating to or denoting having a strong or widespread impact. - Synonyms: (monumental, immense, enormous)

It’s seismic events that have happened since.

4. phony [ˈfoʊni] - (adjective) - Not genuine; fraudulent. - Synonyms: (fake, bogus, insincere)

What are your sort of thoughts about the phony pre-election period?

5. prism [ˈprɪzəm] - (noun) - A particular viewpoint through which an individual perceives or interprets events or realities. - Synonyms: (perspective, outlook, viewpoint)

And that became the prism through which we were looking at politics.

6. sliding doors [ˈslaɪdɪŋ dɔrz] - (noun phrase) - A metaphorical term referring to critical junctures or decisions that can greatly alter the course of events. - Synonyms: (turning point, watershed, pivotal moment)

It’s one of the great sliding doors moments.

7. nimbleness [ˈnɪmbəlnɪs] - (noun) - The quality of being quick and light in movement or understanding. - Synonyms: (agility, dexterity, quickness)

That idea of nimbleness actually takes us to the first kind of big news story.

8. veterans [ˈvɛtərəns] - (noun) - Experienced individuals in a particular field, especially seasoned politicians or public figures. - Synonyms: (experts, seasoned professionals, old hands)

They found themselves in a massive dilemma over what to do with one of the iconic veterans of the labor left.

9. thumping [ˈθʌmpɪŋ] - (adjective) - Exceptionally large, massive or overwhelmingly significant. - Synonyms: (colossal, enormous, massive)

They absolutely smashed the Tories. They’ve got a historically incredible thumping massive majority.

10. improvisation [ˌɪmprəvaɪˈzeɪʃən] - (noun) - The act of creating and performing spontaneously or without preparation. - Synonyms: (extempore, spontaneous, unscripted)

And I guess some those moments of improvisation, some political leaders can rise to that and others

How Keir Starmer won and how Rishi Sunak lost the UK General Election - BBC Newscast

I can't be certain. Are we heading to the polls? Because no one's actually saying it this time. It feels different. Someone involved said, look, the thing is, well, what if we. If he hadn't been brave enough to do it in the rain, he'd have got slated for not being brave enough to do it in the rain. There were proper moments. What, really? Actually, maybe they weren't quite as ready as they thought they were. He wasn't going to be a candidate, he wasn't the leader of reform. And then. I've changed my mind.

You couldn't have scripted a worse set of events for a leader on the right during an election campaign. Hello, Laura, as you start your tea. Or is that eggnog or mulled wine? It's coffee. It's white coffee. Yeah, sorry. Hello. Hi, Christmasy. Hi, Christmasy. And hello, Chris. Hi. Right, I thought we'd do a little trip down memory lane, although is the election a lane or is it like a sort of like chicane super highway, like a ski slalom? But first of all, we've done some statistics, statistical number crunching about our own podcast. So we rebranded as Election Cast, as we do, as we do quite regularly over 10 years. How unusually self intelligent.

Yeah. We did 2565 minutes of election Cast. Good God, everyone. Absolutely delightful. You say that though, but 360 of those minutes. But the six hour long live episode I did on BBC sounds the day before and that is a total of 42.75 hours. How many episodes do you think that was? Sorry, my mind was already speaking. You're already on memory late. My mind had canted off into a different field. How many? 66 episodes between 22 May and 8 July. There you go.

That's a lot. And I remember every single one, which is good because we're now going to recap some of the most most important bits. Do we want to do a little sort of pre election, like sort of just lay the ground and it's all. I always find it quite hard to like get myself back into the mindset of what was happening before. Kind of big seismic events that have happened since. But what are your sort of thoughts about the. The phony pre election period?

Once upon a time there was a man called Boris Johnson. Look, I think we were. We're not going that far back. We were in a grinding status quo. Yeah. For a long time when it was pretty clear that the Tories believed they were going to lose the election. Labor believed they were going to win the election. Although they maybe emotionally didn't quite allow themselves to believe it in a different way. But that was the status quo.

The stories had been scrapping other, having a terrible time for years and years. Labor had been grinding towards a victory and we were in that status quo for a long time. Basically all of, just about all of sort of 20, 23. Yeah. So two things that. So I remember two particular moments the, in that first six months of this year around the election. Firstly was a trip to Bristol that I did on pretty much the first working day in January, January 3rd or 4th or something like that was pouring with rain.

We were with Keir Starmer and he was doing his, the kind of, you know, new year speech, but new year in an election year speech and then was doing some interviews afterwards. And meanwhile, somewhere else in the country, Rishi Sunak was doing something, but a bit more low key because his main start of the year speech was somewhere else on a different day. And he was talking to a regional ITV reporter, as often happens, and they do a few questions on a few different things. And in answer to, I think the third or fourth question out popped this line about how the election will be in the second half of the year.

And this was. Except it was more secondhand than that because he said, my working assumption is exactly, exactly. And this was, yeah, this was done to a regional ITV reporter midway through an interview. It wasn't live. We were standing in this manufacturing site. I'm about to say the Prime Minister. He wasn't the Prime Minister at the time. The labor leader was doing these round of interviews with folk like me and Robert Pesson and others when this news started circulating second hand. Oh, what's, what's the Prime Minister said and what's the exact wording? And can we get hold of the tape? And basically I had to do a chunk of my interview with Keir Starmer again in order to get a reaction to this thing about the, about the timings.

But then we were in, and we were already in, as Laura said, into this period where folk like us were using the E word all the time, but with a question mark afterwards, where it would be perfectly reasonable for newscasters and others to think, yeah, yeah, we know it's coming up fairly soon, but just come back and tell us when it's actually, actually on. And of course we didn't know. And that became the prism through which we were looking at politics for the next five months until we got that point in virtually not calling it.

And we've had quite a few books Loads of conversations with people. What do you think swung it for number 10 about pushing the button for the. For the 4th of July? I think they believed that nothing was going to get any better. The end. Yeah. And also there was a dispute within. Within Rishi. Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. And the campaign director. Is it Levito, who was the guy who was, you know, sort of designed the 2019 victory to a great extent. He was against it and that wasn't a secret.

But I think they. They didn't think it was going to get any better. And I remember a particular conversation with someone who worked in the treasury and they sat and said, nothing is going to get better. People haven't realized how bad the books are. This was a conservative source and also we're going to have to pay for all sorts of things that nobody's counting in the infected blood, blood compensation. What's happened this week, the Government's had to start paying that out and that's more than £10 billion.

The Horizon Post Office scandal they're going to have. Yeah. But they talked specifically about there was going to be nothing to offer the Conservative Party any hope of doing tax cuts, which they might have wanted to offer in an autumn election. However, it's still disputed and it's one of the great sliding doors moments. You know, if they'd hung on till the autumn, inflation went down, all sorts of things might have looked different. But. But it was so broken, you know, it was so broken.

And when we're thinking about moments of the year and this goes into the campaign, but it just stucks in my mind because was a. Just a flavor of how broken everything was. Somebody passed me a recording of a Home Office minister describing the Rwanda policy, flagship policy as being crap. Right. That is how you had government ministers going around. Obviously they hadn't chosen to put that into the public domain, but it was just so broken and on air we sat and did Winner doing our job.

We played it to the Home Secretary who was then James, cleverly, and he had to sort of defend it and say, well, actually he's saying that the policy is crap, but it's not really crap because is the best policy we've got. And just tying himself knots. You just say, wow, that it has come to this. It was so broken. So whenever it was going to be, I think it was. They were fighting the inevitable all along, whenever the date might have been. And then we'd had.

We'd already had a couple of sort of false alarms around the. A potential moment where it looked like there Might be a head of steam building towards the Prime Minister, including once on a Friday sort of lunchtime, which would have been a slightly weird. Yeah, yeah. Saying, you know, it was all going to happen and then on the day itself, and most of those. Most of those pre.

And pretty much all of those previous occasions, you know, I was able to make a few calls and be fairly confident fairly quickly. It wasn't happening yet. Yet being the opposite word. But when you're trying to find out is it going to happen today or on Monday or whatever. And then came that particular day where the night before. It's a classic thing. It's when people are not picking up phones and the wider governing government system, people saying to me, something's going on at the center. And this was civil servants saying this, as well as special advisors and others.

They're not picking up. Something's going weird. They're up to something. And there was only one something that could really be up, realistically given where we were in the electoral cycle. And all the stuff about them kind of running out of steam and things going wrong and all. And all the. And all the rest of it. And that carried on that evening, morning after, still that wall of silence. And then I was thinking, you know, what do you do with this? Do you go, because, Because I. You. I'm so conscious doing the job I do of not being, you know, not being the emperor with no clothes.

Whoa. Something's happening maybe. And then actually it doesn't. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to. I went on the slow program and said, I can't be certain because no one's actually saying it, but this time it feels different. And I reckon it might be happening today. And people listening to this might be quite surprised that there were quite senior people in the government and the Mach who didn't know. Yeah. And actually that became significant in the early stages because there were quite a few conservatives going, hang on, I don't. I don't agree with timing.

And actually, and, and people who knew they were going to be out of a job going, hang on, I don't have time to sort out my life. Like, why has he done this? No, for sure. And because what had happened, as well as you'd pass the date when they might conceivably have had an election in May. So the sort of working assumption, to use she soon at phrase, was that if they were going to do spring, they'd do in May because there are load elections then anyway, but they'd pass the deadline for Doing that.

And I, you know, it's, it's a moment though when what is happening is it's not about the government machine, it's about the party machine. So news had reached my ears from a part, a party person saying, yeah, I'm, I'm sure it's happening and I think it's going to be the first week of July. And I was like, july? What, what you want about that? Nobody has talked about July. Where is the logic for July? Not least because good Scottish people have already gone on holiday. Right, right. Concerned about, you know, there was no, there had been no smart money on July, November, October or May.

And, but, but just to go back to your, your question about it's weird that senior people in the government machine don't know what's going on. These are party decisions and that's really, when you get into an election, you're moving away. This is when the, the parties fight it out. And it's interesting, labor, for a long time they'd been convinced there was going to be a spring election. Absolutely convinced. So much so that about 10 days before Rishi Sunak called the election, we went to a Labor event in Thurrock in Essex. Yeah.

Which, which was, which oozed election launch. Because you know, when you go to as many events as we do, you can see the ones that are relatively hastily arranged, relatively cheaply rented and then you can see the ones where they've thrown money. That's what they planned it as though it was. That's what they planned it as. Expecting it was going to be that. Go ahead and do it because. Oh yeah, because you had all the classics. Like it wasn't, it was like the audience was in the round. So Keir Starmer was surrounded by people. There was a parade of, of labor with various stories, the video, the videos, the lighting, the things that take time and money and focus and attention. But.

And they plowed on with it. You know, that was that. I do remember that day. It's like, oh, this is a group of people that love a bullet pointed list to explain what they're doing isn't necessarily the best way of conveying a powerful message to the general population. It might be quite a good way of organizing yourself and organizing a potential government, but not necessarily convincing people that you've got a really obvious plan. Then there's the moment itself where Rishi's Sunak presses the go button and he's in Downing street in, in an image that's now become infamous of him just getting totally soaked in the rain and chatting to somebody who is very involved in that.

They said the biggest reason that that happened was because the last time he'd done one of those big street moments was after George Galloway had won that by election and he wanted to do a big thing about the dangers of extremism. And it had rained during that, but it was in the dark. And so they'd all got into their minds, oh, the PM can go out, get rained on and actually it doesn't really show up on tv, unfortunately, during the day it does, yeah. And it really, really, really, really, really, really did. But I remember on that day and someone involved said, look, the thing is, well, what if we. If he hadn't been brave enough to do it in the rain, he got slated for not being brave enough to do it in the rain, or if we'd put a brolly on him, he would have taken the mick for him having a brolly.

I mean, and. And it did look. Absolutely. And it was. And the thing is, it was proper. It was proper. And you know, because you were there. Yeah. And all of our. In the street for longer. So we bit of the earlier in the day, starting to think about assembling all of our kit on the road for six weeks and various members of the team saying we must make sure we've got spares and all the rest of it. We went through all of our kit in the first afternoon because there's one thing electronic kit really does not like, and that is rain. And everything was wrecked and we were absolutely soaked.

And the thing is, it tilted from. It tilted from underwear. It was like a monsoon. Look, I just have to say for the record, I never wanted to know that. I didn't want to be reminded of it today. Thanks. Sorry, sorry. But it's true. I've lost my train of thought now, but yeah, it was, it was. The thing is, it was just beyond. It was. It was absurd levels of rain, that was the thing. But actually not necessarily at the start. So you understand why somebody might take the gamble and be like, oh, we can get through it, actually.

But here's another thing, and it's the thing about Rishi Sunak that's sort of one of his. And you know, he had many strengths, his backers would say, but one of his flaws or difficulties as a politician was improvising. So a different politician in a downpour would have been able to crack a gag, refer to it somehow, say something sort of self deprecating, wrap it up quicker or whatever. Right. And he just was Sticking to the script, not even saying I wouldn't have done it today if I know.

Right. And then that's how you charm people. You make a joke and you know, as we were saying, I think I was saying to Patty a couple of weeks ago, it's great line from somebody in. In one of the parties said the thing is not sure that Kier is the good politician who can put your taxes up with a smile and make you feel good. And I just. And it's the same actually. Soon I can st. I have a lot in common, actually. Yeah, they do. A lot in common and how you turn some really sort of quick silverish politicians can turn moments of real challenge actually into a win for them.

And you could have won a lot years and years ago. Tony Blair House Prime Minister I think it was the CBI Conference center in Islington in North London and there was a bit of a protest. I think it was an environmental. It was about nuclear power. Yeah, something like that. And it was completely chaotic. Do you do the speech? He ends up on some sort of soapbox or standing on a chair or whatever, but managed to kind of pull off and keep the audience with him in a moment of total kind of shambles and chaos. And I guess some those moments of improvisation, some political leaders can rise to that and others.

Yeah. Others not. And that idea of nimbleness actually takes us to the first kind of big news story of the campaign, which is what would Labour do about Diane Abbott? Right. Which lasted for three or four days. It did. And they did not look like they were in control of their narrative. They were having a lot of internal Russians about it and it looked very, very messy. And so the backstory to this is that Diane Abbott had been suspended as a Labor MP back in April 2023. She'd made to the Guardian about how Jewish, Irish and traveler people don't face racism all of their lives.

She then withdrew their remarks and she was the subject of a big investigation and she was allowed back into the Labour parliamentary party. But there was lots of speculation that she would be blocked from being a candidate at the election for labor or maybe even that she was going to sort of retire gracefully. But that all kind of blew up and ended up in a multi day row about would she, wouldn't she be allowed to stand? So Kiyosama had taken control and grip of the Labour Party by his supporters would say marvelously, ruthlessly rooting out the left, taking control of the party machine, absolutely cracking down on anti Semitism.

But it was a lot about anti Semitism and getting rid of that, but it was also about grabbing control of the levers of the party that in the heat of the first week of the election campaign, they found themselves in a massive dilemma over what to do with one of the iconic veterans of the labor left, a black female MP who is a household name. And not many politicians are household names. That was shambolic. And they didn't have control of the briefing. They weren't really in charge of everything that was happening.

And I just thought, God, you know, they've been preparing for this for a long time. But it stuck out. Stuck out to me when I was thinking about the campaign, because it showed you that actually maybe they weren't quite as ready as they thought they were. And that's been the theme of their first six months in government. So when I was thinking back to, it's like, actually, that was just a little pebble in the pond that, yes, this machine is slick. They are ready. They've worked damn hard. They're. They. They say.

And during. I'm sure people were saying the same thing to you, Chris. I remember talking to people who are now cabinet ministers saying, oh, you won't believe the amount of preparation we've done. It's amazing. Sue's made us doing all but also the program of work for government. And now they've arrived. It's much more common to have a minister saying, well, and their opponents saying, and including some government officials saying, I don't really think they've got that much of have. Well, we're now sort of like messing with the timeline a bit, but have we got to the bottom of whether labor were prepared enough for government?

And I know it's all tied up with personnel issues and personalities as well, but. And maybe it's an impossible thing to get to the bottom of. So the thing that I was struck by, save. Save for that. And it was a big moment, the whole Diana kind of wobble that they had, and this has become something of a cliche really, in the last six months.

But, you know, the surprise election caused by the Conservatives played out looking like more of a surprise to the Conservatives than it did to. Than it did to labor and labor on the whole, particularly in terms of what they had prepared to do as opposed to dealing with things that came at them and took them by surprise. They were. They were really prepared for their campaign and they knew what they wanted to do and they knew the message that they wanted to prosecute, but they were also. And this gets into the sort of psychology, of the party, really. They were obsessed in those six months before about not giving an impression that they were measuring up the curtains, that they took anything for granted.

They were very aware of their own history, which is their capacity to lose elections, including ones that many people think they're going to. They're going to win. And yet we were being told at the time. Ah, yes, but. And this reflects what you were saying. You know, we've got Sue Gray, she worked in government for years, she. She's focused on the plans for the plans for government, etc. Etc. And yet what we've seen since then, and it's a real contrast because so much of their campaign was so well prepared and, you know, pretty slick, really. And Starmer didn't say multiple times, we're ready to govern on day one. Oh, yeah. Ground running. Ground running. Ground running. Ground running. Yeah.

And yet they have. They've. They've sort of hit the ground stumbling. Yeah, yeah. And. And with real concern privately from ministers at a very senior level that that kind of narrative that's built up is. Is an accurate one. That. That is. That is the. That is the reality of what's happening. I think that's what we've seen. Right. Yeah, yeah. And a real worry from them that if they don't turn that round pretty quickly, a year will have gone by where. Where they've perhaps not made the most of what they could have done.

While we're mucking around with the timeline. Yes. Dr. Strange is producing this episode of Newscast. That's no way to talk about the team through their glasses. Just for the record, I will always defend your interests over. Yeah. What is time. I just look forward to May of next year. But just in terms of the. Yeah. Tweaking the timeline again, back to the day the election was called, actually Labour. Labour had been tipped off because of movements in the betting market, which then became a massive story at the end of the election campaign. Because of some revelations.

Yeah. I mean, yes, that whole twist in the campaign was astonishing, really. The tip offs that I had and Pippa Creera of the Guardian had, and certainly the ones that I got there were proper moments of what, really, that people in the Tory inner circle had been betting on the date of the election. Yeah. Not just them. So, I mean, the first tip off I had related to some of the. Or related to a particular.

To those who were close protection officers of the Prime Minister, police officers, and that we quickly managed to stand up, to use the sort of journalistic phrase, because the Metropolitan Police acknowledged that that was happening. Yeah. And then I had a tip off about a parliamentary candidate who happened to work in Conservative hq and we chased that down and did all of our checking and we. And we broadcast. And we broadcast that and then we broadcast that first on the 10:00 news the night before, having done the police story on at 6:00. And then I was in a.

I was in. I was on my way home at about gone midnight one of those nights, and someone texted me and said, do you know who, you don't know who she's married to? And I said no, because to be honest, I'd not heard of her until five hours before. So the family tree was. Was certainly news to me. And they said, oh, well, you know, she's married to the. Yeah, the director of campaigns. Blimey. Right. Well, there's a. There's another strand and also that. Yeah. And so off we went again. Yeah. And then you and I were in the morning and then.

Yeah, that was. And, and sort of on it and it was. And it was extraordinary and seeing the Prime Minister as know, seeing Rishi Sunak at the time, because obviously we're chasing him and Keir Starmer and Ed Davy and John Sweeney and all the others around the country, just that sense of. Yet from his perspective, on a human level, from his perspective, yet more air going out of the balloon of this thing that he. Any political leader in that moment would find that sort of thing off the scale irritating, but given his character and his sense of propriety and all the rest of it, just a punch in the guts. Yeah, another punch in the guts after the previous punch in the guts, which was the criticism he got for leaving D day, that we got that picture of David Cameron, sorry, Lord Cameron, the then Foreign Secretary, hanging out with the German Chancellor, the French President.

And you know what? I was at a do about a week ago and was sitting next to a senior Conservative who was still six months on venting about that and what a, in their view, massive own goal it was and how. And, and, and in the view of this person, the direct impact they reckoned it had in particular seats from the election, I mean, that was a dream for the Labor Party and the absolute nightmare. I mean, but you know, the betting thing, the D day thing, the rain, you couldn't have scripted a worse set of events for a leader on the right during an election campaign. I mean, you just really couldn't because they all saw kind of a lack of.

They all kind of talked to a lack of dignity Right, yeah, it was just when you're thinking about Sunat's character, you know, he's not a sort of a joker and someone might be like, oh well, everyone had a little bit of a flutter, hahaha. And people go, well that's a bit grim, but never mind, move on. He wasn't somebody who'd be able to say, come out and say, well dj Well, I had important bit, I was there and I paid my respects and we did this, that and the other, and he just. All of those things were terrible political accidents that just all looked awful.

And in policy terms, I mean, their signature policy, the Conservatives, was the, the return of national service, which was actually not even that. And that's an interesting lesson in how in an election campaign something can get lots of attention and everyone's talking about it and everyone has an opinion about it, it's very easily communicable, but it's not. That doesn't necessarily mean that you're actually achieving anything with it. No. Although they did manage with the campaign that. And they grabbed the conch, if you like, for, for a couple of days over that policy.

And I remember getting briefed on that, thinking, well that'll get people talking. And it did. And you thought, oh. Because there was a view in a lot of senior Conservatives actually that summer was still not that good and they probably weren't going to be able to beat him. That would have looked completely ludicrous. But they didn't actually have to have the kind of complete pasting that some of the more outlandish polls were suggesting and indeed that the result bit was a pasting, even though it wasn't a kind of completely outlandish pasting that the, some of the crackers ended, the polling industry were suggesting.

Polling of course can be very useful, but the ranges and the kind of levels of polling that we were seeing was sort of, I mean, just wild. Yeah, but, but actually those sort of unforced errors just meant that that idea that they might not actually take on that much water wasn't even wanting to make a pun. Then they just, they just lost it. But you get the ebbs and flows as well. So it's interesting. This conversation just starts the memory sort of jolting through the, through the, the, the highways and byways of the campaign.

Glad you knew what the format was going to be in advance because I thought we were only doing another one minute of this election because whilst Richard Sunak and the Conservatives had these really kind of grim moments from their perspective, think that National Service thing got people talking. The other moment at that first TV debate, the ITV debate in Salford that Julie Etchingham hosted, Rishi Sunak was. He arguably won that night the ball on tax. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So basically, like, Rishi Sunak was making all these claims that labor would put up everyone's taxes by £2,000 over the course of a parliament. And it took Keir Summer a long time, about an hour and a half. A long time. Even, even like kind of amateur, amateur armchair politician knows that the first rule is you have to fight back and not let that dominate. Yeah, yeah.

And. And, you know, I speak to conservatives now who say, well, that figure was an underestimate because there was a huge argument in the days afterwards around the veracity of that number and how that number had been arrived at. But. But there was also a fair bit of soul searching within the labor campaign about the perceived lack of sharpness from Keir Starmer that night in dealing with. With something that had come at him. And it took him rather a long time. I said two hours.

A minute ago, it had been about 45 minutes, wasn't. It was an hour. It wasn't like the length, like a Lord of the Rings film. It took him most of that program to get to the point where he was willing to try and hose it down. Are we all kicking ourselves that we didn't specifically ask labor ministers whether they were planning to put up employers, national insurance? Well, the Tories had spotted it. Who was there then as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury?

I mean. Yeah, I was thinking about that as well, because we had Reeves on, and she did say, and it was a sort of story out of our interview, and she said, we will not put up income attacks and we will not put up that. And of course you think, oh, well, should have asked her about that more specific thing. But, you know, you're dealing with what you're dealing with and an interview is not very interesting. If you go down the chat list of. I didn't mean to beat you up about not asking. No, but it's a good qu. And I.

And it's a. It's a. It's a good question. And I think also what they've said in that is they'd have stuck to their formula, which is, we are not going to put taxes up on working people. That was their formula. That's still their formula. And then. Well, actually, it's now modulated into we're not putting taxes on pay slips. Yes. Because, like, if you get a pay slip from a But, but, and it took them a little while to come up with that formulation.

They looked like they maybe were breaching. But what do what, you know, what part of the election dynamic was that whoever wins, they're going to have to do really horrible things in terms of pressures on public spending and they're gonna have to raise taxes somehow. And that was very clear. And we did all wang on about that endlessly. Back to the psychology, though, of labor and their attitude pre election, given their nervousness about their electoral performance and particularly their economic credibility, that, you know, Rachel Reeves as shadow Chancellor could have decided, and Keir Starmer could have decided pre election to oppose those cuts in employee insurance that the conservatives had to make an argument about it's not sustainable given the state of the public finances, blah, blah, blah.

But didn't feel they had the, didn't have the political, didn't feel they had the political space or the courage or willingness at that point to do that with an election coming. And what would have been attacks from their opponents about typical old labor, bunging up your taxes, et cetera, et cetera. Although I do remember very clearly sitting in that seat that you're sitting in now, Laura, when we did that six hour long marathon newscast before the election day and Liz Kendall, who's now the working pension secretary, was on down the line and I said to Liz Kendall, can you promise me that Rachel Reeves, kind of about a month after she's become chancellor, will not come to Parliament and say, I've opened the books, there's loads of things that are really bad in there that I didn't know about.

We're going to have to change our plans. And Liz Kendall said, I can guarantee you that will not happen. I was like, really? Because that normally happens after election. She's like, nope, we've got the Office of Budget responsibility now. That lays it all out. It's all very clear. We will not, Rachel Reeves will not do that. And then what happened?

Rachel Reese did exactly that. And I think also it's both true and untrue that there weren't, there were things that you couldn't possibly have imagined nasties lurking. So, and if you talk to people in government who are not political about that, they sort of say, well, it's sort of fair that, yes, you can only understand how difficult, difficult things are once you're on the inside. It is also grade A nonsense to suggest that nobody knew that there were going to have to be very difficult decisions about probably raising taxes or cutting loads of public spending or trying to do both in a rather.

No, and we tried to reflect that and yeah, we reported it all the way through. Paul Johnson of the, of the Fiscal Studies was out about making those arguments as, as well. Yeah. Nigel Farage, so he did a bit of a, he did a bit of a U turn because he wasn't going to be a candidate, he wasn't the leader of Reform. And then, then within a couple of days he was a candidate for a constituency and he was the new leader of Reform.

Are you suggesting that Nigel Farage sometimes dances around what his plans might be until he can decide what the best outcome might be for himself and makes news at every stage? Exactly. Of course he was. And actually though, that's another reason why some Tories think Sunat should have waited because he waited till the autumn. Farage might have been over in Trump world, enjoying himself, hanging around Mar a Lago and then however, you know, sliding doors, who knows? But yeah, Andrew Farrah and Reform had an absolutely stonking election. They came second and I think nearly 100 seats, they managed to get some MPS. Farage's seventh attempt or eighth attempt, I think.

Yeah. To actually get his bum on. The Green benches managed. And they, since they've, and I think not necessarily because of using the sort of pulpit they've got in Parliament, it feels in a way they're, they're doing clever politics outside Parliament. They're doing really professionalizing, building campaigning around the country. And he had a great election. And I think 2025 is going to be very interesting to see how Reform does because they, they have successfully tapped into that mood in the country that other, that politicians are very aware of and Labour is very worried about.

Is that not just the feeling that, oh, well, nothing really works, but also nothing really works and nobody who's in charge actually has got any idea how to solve the problem. And I hadn't quite clocked this until, until a few weeks ago, which is that for the first few months, okay, Reform were a presence in Parliament because of the things that they said and the issues that they raised and the behavior of some of their, their MPs. But they didn't really feel like a sort of the big structural presence in British politics that the election results suggested.

But then in the last few weeks of 2024, that changed and everyone started talking about actually, and it's because people are starting to think about the next set of elections, whether it's local authorities in England or the Welsh Assembly. Yeah. And they're working very hard. And Wales, we're really hard in Wales, they're working really hard at building the kind of not sexy but really important structures that a party needs if it's gonna, if it's going to do well, which is the operation on the ground. In lots of different, in lots of different parts of the country, they're putting a huge amount of attention and, and having real success in terms of social media.

Nigel Farage on Tick Tock so talking to an audience that you might not imagine would be, would be their kind of core audience, young men in particular, particular they're reaching with doing this video about the London hotel that didn't have any full fat milk. Oh yeah, yes, yes. But it's an interesting thing though. I remember we did a load of focus groups in the year we did that Britain in a room thing we had. And the Reform voters group were fascinating and they weren't people who you'd have put in any one particular political box.

So when we used to talk about, you know, UKIP and then Brexit Party, this of and the ancestors of the Reform Party, they were always either sort of driven about by immigration or dislike of Brussels and the European Union sort of mega structure and that kind of flank of politics. Basically, you know, a sort of a right wing strand. Reform is much more complicated than that. It really is and it's much more about sort of emotion and sentiment. And I think, as I say, I think the 2025, they're going to have a very interesting year.

And the only person probably who enjoyed the election campaign more than that was Ed Davey. Yes, yes. Paddle border extraordinaire. Watery fun, you know, Ed Davy theme park master. So, you know, they had a great time. And the Lib Dems, I mean they, they, they fought incredibly good campaigns on the ground for a long time. They were laser targeted on seats that they thought they could win. Candidates had to really work hard to get central resources.

You know, they were very canny about where they were putting their resources in towns that had posh bakeries and they are now once again the third party in Parliament. And so that was a huge, we shouldn't forget about that part of the election and the massive demise of the snp. So they did a big switcheroo and all sorts of very interesting things. I mean, the Lib Dems played a binder as a campaign to turn, you know, a party that for so long has railed against the first past the post system because it was so often something that did them an injustice.

This time it was, it was reform who ended up With a massive number of votes versus a very small number of seats to, to turn and to turn those stunts. Because those stunts were very visual and shareable on social media and all the rest of it. They were also very geographically focused. Yeah, of course. So you knew that, oh, he's at that place down the road where you can go, you know, zip down a water slide or, or whatever. Well, and their big thing was about the sewage problem and so the paddle board falling.

Perfect distillation of that being their issue. Yeah, and, and, and sort of professionalizing the embarrassing dad routine. But then do it. But then, because he could talk very passionately and very authentically about his own personal experience as far as looking after his disabled son is concerned and the loss of his parents when he was young, he couldn't be caricatured as a sort of, you know, middle class bloke, having a whale of a time when lots of people are struggling because he could talk very authentically about his, his own, his own family struggles.

So combining those two things with the stunts and then that geographical focus was an extraordinary outcome from them. The challenge, though, for them, and I've been struck by this in the last six months, is, is how you turn 70 odd mps into influence. So they've massively expanded their parliamentary footprint, but they're now in a parliament with a, you know, labor government with a colossal majority. And then, and then a noisy argument involving, involving reform and then the Conservatives trying to work out what they do given reform and given where they find themselves in Parliament.

And I think the challenge for the Lib Dems now is. Yeah, what. How do you turn that into. Into influence? Well, and the same issue, but on a much smaller scale for the Greens. Yeah. Who got four MPs, so quadrupling their number of MPs from the previous Parliament. But that then maybe reveals more about divisions within the Greens than it does about what the Greens can do to influence everyone else.

And it's what you do. What you do with it now. Right, you've got your, You've got there. What do you do with it now? And there's interesting. They did well in town and country, run different campaigns in different places. And of course, successful political parties always run different campaigns in different places, even though, of course, we endlessly talk about their national message and the big thing. But, you know, politicians who do well are flexible and nimble and they do run differently in different places.

And the Greens in Suffolk were running different focuses to the Greens in Bristol. And what they do with it now will Be really interesting to see. And 2025 is going to be. I think it might be quite a wild ride. But without question the, the. The massive, massive headline from the election beyond all the different strands we've talked about, it's just have for the four. After 14 years of one lot, another tribe are in charge and they absolutely smashed the Tories.

They've got a historically incredible thumping massive majority. Significantly chug here than Boris Johnson's huge majority in 2019. And that is a huge moment of history that every newscaster will remember. There just haven't been that many Labour prime ministers who've been elected. You're right. Correct. And there haven't been that many governments ever with such a big majority. And it doesn't feel like it. Which is the interesting observation for the first six months.

No, quite. It feels more competitive. The, the. The conversation feels more competitive than the numbers. Labor can win any vote, any vote they want and win it comfortably. Even with significant massive rebellions, they could still win the key thing. And we just touched on this earlier and this is. This will be the. It's central to the political story of 2024 is can they be shown to. Can they demonstrate a sense of delivery or does there become a growing sense that neither of the big Westminster parties are for whatever reason sufficiently equipped to deliver a sense of lives getting better for significant numbers of people governing in the 2020s is proving pretty tricky.

Whatever your political colour. Can a government with a really big majority actually do stuff that people think okay, yeah, things are happening or not. And it was just. This is the cheesy Christmas babes. Just such a privilege being able to sort of sit and think and read and listen and then talk about it every day with you guys. It's amazing. It's amazing.

Do you want to end on some momentous moments? Pick a momentous moment from either the campaign or election night or. Well, I mean the two things actually we've touched on already. The Diane Abbott thing, I thought was fascinating. The Rwanda's crap moment was a just kind of the moment. This is really, really broken and bad. But. Oh, the moment that I think, well, when we. When we said that labor had won, you know, when you have enough in to know that labor are going to win. I can't remember what time that was.

Or the exit. An exit poll. That's an exit. I remember selfishly reading out the exit pools. Quite. If you do AR because you're a tv kind of. Exactly. That's kind of quite exciting. And you're standing there and you're going. Your highway is going. Going. Yeah. The ball suggests a late. And I was.

Yeah, well, I think I said before I practiced all the different versions when I was in the shower. The exit polls predicting, yay, SMP landslide. No, that one's probably not going to happen. Everyone was getting wet at some point in the. So, yeah, I. I remember sort of, because obviously prior to that moment where Clive and Laura were reading out the exit poll result and Nick and Rachel were doing it on the radio and all the rest. The rest of it, obviously, we're told the numbers just before. And just being sat there, I think I was sat next to you with a.

With a padded, you know, biro and a grid. And. And you're thinking, okay, okay, okay. And then. And then immediately I'm thinking, right, well, what does that mean for what I'm going to be saying in. Yeah, 10 minutes. 10 minutes time. And that's a privilege, real privilege. Oh, being in that room is amazing. Yeah.

And I may or may not have told people to shut up and stop talking about whatever they. Oh, yeah, yeah. I do remember Bandinage. I was like, I do remember that. Working here. I didn't even say anything, Laura. I was going to use it. No, I know it wasn't.

My moment's very boring compared to that. But it was a sort of. On air one. And it's when Chris, you and I were recording an episode of Newscast on a Friday tea time, and then we got the news that Michael Gove wasn't standing as a candidate. And now it's pretty obvious he probably wouldn't, because why would you, after all those years in office and then want to be in opposition and blah, blah. But for me, it was just like, all right, it's that old cliche of the end of an era that was like, that was the moment. Generational. This is that.

That chapter which was basically been my whole, whole political journalist life. Michael Go's been there was. Was ending. And six months later, he was handing out prizes to politicians at the Spectator Awards, including Newcomer. And then interviewing. And then interviewing Kemi Badenok for the magazine he now edits. Whoever said that Westminster is a revolving door of people too connected?

Well, we're not heading for a revolving door, we're heading for the exit door, because that's it for this episode of Newscast where we've been looking back at the 2024 general election. And the best thing is that you were there with us the whole way through. So thanks for reminiscing with us too. Bye.

POLITICS, ECONOMICS, LEADERSHIP, ELECTION, UK POLITICS, POLITICAL CAMPAIGNING, BBC NEWS