Can Chancellor John Healey avoid big tax rises?

Politics At Sam and Anne's

The episode covers the second day of the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, which is currently overshadowed by a security incident at RAF Fairford

Key takeaways

• A potential terrorist incident at RAF Fairford has raised significant concerns regarding Iranian involvement and US military staging.
• Donald Trump provided a clarification regarding the investigation, though accounts differ between US and UK media reports.
• Nigel Farage has demanded transparency regarding the identities of suspects arrested near the airbase.
• Chancellor John Healey is maintaining a low profile ahead of his October budget to avoid overshadowing other news.
• Tensions exist between the Treasury and ministers like Louise Haig over economic strategy and fiscal rules.

Main topics

• RAF Fairford security incident
• Labour Party conference dynamics
• UK-US military relations

Notable quotes

The regime in Tehran had already made threats against RAF Fairford.

Conclusion

The episode provides a deep dive into the intersection of national sec

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) Online sadistic groups Speaker 2 (0:02) are targeting vulnerable children. The sheer amount of potential victims Speaker 1 (0:08) is astounding. Speaker 4 (0:09) It's Speaker 1 (0:09) a Speaker 4 (0:09) very real threat and it is here in the UK. It will always shock me. A young boy could commit such awful offences. Some of the content has been the worst I've ever seen. Parents need to be aware of what can happen on these sites. Find the calm. on Sky News YouTube. Speaker 2 (0:33) Hello, good morning and welcome. It's Monday, September 28th, day two of the Labour Party conference in Liverpool. A conference now overshadowed by a potential terrorist incident at an RAF base in Gloucestershire. Detectives are investigating whether Iran is linked to a foiled bomb plot at the military base used as a staging post for US military planes in Iran. Speaker 3 (0:56) Andy Burnham and his team remaining in Liverpool on receipt of that news with the Prime Minister. cancelling some appointments to get updates, but minimal new information there on what was going on. And it was left to Donald Trump to give us some sort of clarification. Speaker 2 (1:13) It's interesting because there's been a general higher alert. The regime in Tehran had already made threats against RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire with concerns that the planned attack was a retaliation for its use as a staging post for US strikes in the Middle East. Now, you just heard there Donald Trump's account. But the US media and the UK media slightly differ. And there's a different account in a lot of the papers this morning, suggesting that there was something altogether less coordinated by the authorities than the US president suggested. Speaker 1 (1:43) Working with Britain, it was an amazing job. We had them under investigation. They were looking to do big damage to our port. And working with the British worked out great. It may have been Scotland Yard. I don't know. We worked with a lot of them. We had them under view for a long time and we got them. Speaker 3 (2:03) And there's quite the detail in this morning's Times. Armed police launched a last minute intervention when they got a concerned call from a farmer driving home late with a friend. She became alarmed when she saw a group of balaclava clad men just a few hundred metres from the RAF airbase. And she called. Police, she initially struggled, she says, to reach the authorities when there was no answer on a Ministry of Defence police number that locals had been given to report suspicious activity. Crikey. Speaker 2 (2:35) Now, Fairford is where US bombers are loaded with bunker busters and were during the start of the Iran conflict in March. Just what activity can be conducted at RAF Fairford? was a big debate in political circles in the early part of the year. And as a result of this, I think that's why you ended up with the bases on higher alert. But there is a political dimension about just how much the Steinman government and now the Burnham government allow the US to conduct military operations that will... that will feed into the questions around this. Speaker 3 (3:12) Yeah, and I think it also raises the this is not our war question because it's something we discussed a lot at that time when this was all kicking off. Some on the podcast was that position that Keir Starmer had of using that language that we were leaning out from the war while, of course, through operations like this conducted by the RAF intervening there to partly to try to... keep straight-to-full moves more open, but in effect getting involved in the conflict when you have US bombers being loaded up there. So the pictures that we saw were five men arrested by terror police sitting shirtless and handcuffed and a big cordon, of course, around the vans, which are thought to contain explosives, a quite serious matter. Speaker 2 (4:02) Now, so far there's been one... political intervention that drags this into the political arena. That's come from Nigel Farage. He's demanded that the identities of the RAF Fairford suspects be released, as he argued that the public, quote, deserved to be told the truth. He said, I've been warning both in and out of Parliament for many months about Iranian agents coming into the UK via small boats across the Channel. Speaker 3 (4:25) Well, let's see how that plays out when we get more transparency on what has really gone on at Fairford. The other consequence of all of this today, obviously it casts a shadow over the Labour Party conference and puts security very firmly at the heart of it. That's on a day when West Treaty, the Defence Secretary, is out and about. Speaker 3 (4:51) Consumers will be that John Healey is somewhat squeezed this morning, swapped out of the morning TV round for the Defence Secretary to take centre stage. He spoke with his US counterpart, Peter Hexeth, last night. Though I do wonder whether John Healey actually minds losing some airtime at the moment. Simon, my impression is that he'd rather stay in his clandestine shell in this conference in the run-up Speaker 2 (5:17) to his budget. What do you reckon? I think you might be onto something, and there's something really interesting going on with John Healy, that the Monday of conferences, traditionally for chancellors, for shadow chancellors, have been massive when you think back to some of George Osborne's sort of big Monday announcements about inheritance tax. George Osborne used the Monday of conference to take away child benefit from higher earners in this first. conference speeches, there was often something of shock and awe. And Gordon Brown used his speeches as well as huge moments. And yet, John Healy seems to