Political Capital (with Pierre Novellie)

Strong Message Here

Host Immanuel Nucci and comedian Pierre Novelli dissect the evolving language of UK politics, focusing on Andy Burnham's strategic use of 'political capital' ahead of the Labour conference. They

Key takeaways

• Andy Burnham is leveraging the concept of 'political capital' to signal willingness to risk his political survival on social care reform and triple lock adjustments.
• The hosts identify 'tough conversation' as a political euphemism that substitutes actual debate or action with performative discussion.

Main topics

• Political capital and Labour conference strategy
• Rhetorical evasion in UK politics

Notable quotes

"The size of that gap is the size of your capital."

Conclusion

The episode argues that modern political discourse has become increasingly detached from

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Speaker 6 (0:06) So, quick summer recap? Speaker 2 (0:08) Heat waves, data leaks, AI hacks, folding phones, and a viral, spinally challenged raccoon. Yeah, Speaker 6 (0:13) I think that covers it, right? I'm Thomas Germain. I'm Speaker 2 (0:17) Jess Maddox, and The Interface is back from its summer break. Speaker 6 (0:19) New season, new co-host, same deep dives into the tech that's shaping our world and our lives. So Speaker 2 (0:26) before AI wipes out all of humanity, Speaker 6 (0:28) allegedly, join Speaker 2 (0:30) us for The Interface. Listen Speaker 6 (0:31) on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 4 (0:42) Hello and welcome to Strong Measured here from BBC Radio 4, a guide to the use and abuse of political language. I'm Immanuel Nucci and this week I'm joined by comedian Pierre Novelli. Hello. Hello. Welcome. I'm seeing you in the flesh. Yes. We collided briefly last series as I emerged from my chicken-induced coma, which I'm not going to explain anymore because you just need to listen to previous episodes. You know what I mean? Speaker 5 (1:03) Yes. You and Phil Wang took over. Yes. The show. Like a raven in the tower. Someone with an Italian name has to be on this show. Oh, gosh, Speaker 4 (1:12) yes. So I Speaker 5 (1:13) stepped in to provide that. Speaker 4 (1:15) Well, thank you for that. Thank you. We'll look at ethnicity and surnames later when we're looking at the phrase legitimate concerns that's used a lot these days. But the primary phrase we're going to look at first is political capital, which has been used by Andy Burnham a lot. It's the week of the Labour conference with... Terrible timing. We're recording this hours before Andy Burnham speaks. Yes. But this will be going out days after he's spoken. True, but luckily loads of Speaker 5 (1:45) things have been leaked as giant maybes. Yes. To the papers, so we can have a big maybe discussion. Okay, Speaker 4 (1:52) yes, I think it will be very much that. Because, yeah, well, what I've been reading is in his conference speech, Andy Burnham will say this. And then quotes from people saying he's going to say the unexpected. So he's going to say stuff that we know about. but also stuff we don't know about and never did know about until he said it. Yes, because some of the Speaker 5 (2:14) leaks are about sort of nationalizing energy and some of the leaks are about social care and some of the leaks are about immigration. And maybe each person who leaked is saying the unexpected about the next leak because they didn't know they were all leaking the same. It's a sort of recycling symbol of leaks. Right, yes. Maybe that's it. Speaker 4 (2:30) Which then, the more you recycle it, the more it builds up a kind of speed and energy and creates a wind effect that will actually take us into the 22nd century. Yes. Oh, just very quickly, I just want, I just, esprit de scallier. Esprit de scallier. That's when you think of something after the time you should have thought of it. Yes. I only raise that because I just wanted to mop up a few bits of Ed Davey from last week's. Of course. Stuart, Lee and I were talking about Ed Davey and a word cloud and how it said man as one of the most popular words that came up. And through a process, you can only understand if you listen to it, we ended up with Ed Davey, the Kraken awakes as a sort of Lib Dem. So anyway, I just want to say thank you to Golden Arrow 74 and many others who messaged me and actually said, I can't see why you didn't think of Ed Davey calling his party. The Liberal Democrat. Very nice. It is very nice. And I now thought, yeah, I just, I should have. So thank you to those. And just while I am mopping up the listeners, we had a letter. from Cy Egan, said, Dear Amanda, I've noticed that some policies are described by the politicians associated with them, Thatcherite and Corbynist, for example. This is fine, but my MP here in Exeter is Steve Race. I can only look forward to his continuing political career, and I'm sure that we will all eagerly support his racist policies once he's PM. Thanks for a vote. So, Cy, yes. Unfortunately, I think that in some form or another, that might come true. Yes, maybe not from Steve. Not from Steve. But a PM. What are we laughing? What are we laughing as Speaker 5 (4:07) the ship goes down? Anyway, Speaker 4 (4:08) yes. Any other unfortunately worded politician surnames? I mean, Ed Bowles isn't in anymore. In Speaker 5 (4:16) Namibia, there is a Speaker 4 (4:17) Hitler. Oh, is there? There is, yes. You've phoned him? I think so. I think there is a Hitler. Standing for in politics? Speaker 5 (4:25) Yes. All right. Yes, yeah. But last year, he changed his name. He didn't want to be associated with... With Hitler. With the other Speaker 4 (4:32) Hitler. Speaker 5 (4:33) With the other Hitler, as he likes to call him. So now he's Adolf Unona. He was called Adolf as well. What? Yeah. Speaker 4 (4:44) He needs to have a word with his parents. Speaker 4 (4:48) Okay, well, let's get on to political capital. What does that mean? I was trying to think of Speaker 5 (4:52) a good definition for it. Speaker 4 (4:54) It's Speaker 5 (4:55) the gap between your non-supporters red line and your supporters red line for how much they'll put up with you. Speaker 4 (5:01) The Speaker 5 (5:01) size of that gap is the size of your capital. If we assume that your supporters are in the majority because you're the PM and you have all the MPs and your voters and whatever, you can annoy the general public by passing things that they might not like, like getting rid of... triple lock or whatever, but only as far as that then descends towards the kind of pointless red line of where your supporters will tolerate it. So they're at the mercy of backbenchers more than ever, I think, because there's a huge, huge labor majority. Yeah. Way bigger of a majority than it took to establish the NHS and the welfare state and all these huge, huge reforms. Massive things, projects. Speaker 4 (5:34) Yeah. And no one can do any, you've got to build 10 meters of railway. That's right. It's incredible. HS2 is just going to be those 10 metres of railway on the roof of a train. Speaker 5 (5:46) Yes. Speaker 4 (5:47) Up and down the West Speaker 5 (5:50) Coast line. One of those heritage sort of steam train things. So they've kept the platform and they've got about 100 metres of track and you can sort of see it arrive, eternally arriving. Yes. And being reset. Oh, yes. But just 100 metres of it so that everyone could go, Speaker 4 (6:02) wow, imagine if we actually had this. Yeah, great. That would be a legacy. But again, political capital. The fact that he's already talking about it and Angela Arendt is talking about it being used up kind of makes it almost feel like a currency that's as real as crypto or your political capital. But again, it lifts it away from the actual day-to-day doing of stuff. Speaker 5 (6:25) Yes. And it implies that even though constitutionally, as the PM, you've got these sort of godlike powers. You're still sort of at the mercy of a sort of a stern drawing room of aunts or something who will say, enough of that, quiet down, and only let you do maybe one thing a term. Every five years you choose one special thing that you get to focus on. But Speaker 4 (6:46) why then? I mean, it's interesting. Why announce in advance that you're going to use up your political capital? But why announce in advance that come the general election, you're all going to hate me? Yeah, I'm keen to be just destroyed, torn to bits. Yeah, but I still want to be the leader of the next general Speaker 5 (6:59) election. It's sort of bravery politics, isn't it? I'm brave. We've had years of no one doing anything, and I'm going to just drive my car right into the wall for you people. For some reason. Yeah, yeah. It's displaying a lack of self-interest in your own survival politically. I think is very popular, but then you do have to follow through on it and actually... Speaker 4 (7:24) Well, there's a thing, I mean, nudging towards this notion here of like we're in a sort of strange metaphysical world of politics is about ideals and words and notions and ideas rather than the practicalities of how you achieve these things. Almost like it's much more interesting and it gets your attention. to base yourself more and more in this idealized plane of what can be done, what we're not going to do, and what we might do, and what we need to talk about we should do. Yes, and never commit to doing anything. But commit to having a Speaker 5 (7:57) conversation. Exactly. And commit Speaker 4 (7:58) to Speaker 5 (7:59) being against things that are bad. Yes. Be very clear on that. Oh, Speaker 4 (8:02) absolutely. All that bad stuff that you don't like, which I need not specify here. Well, we're coming up to Peter Thiel in a minute. He's got stuff to say about badness and evil. But Andy Burnham has been absolutely clear there's not going to be a snap election, that the election will be in 2029, in three years' time, and yet is already talking about commitments that he wants in the election manifesto on maybe closer ties with the EU, on possibly the triple lock being looked at, on the social care service. and various other, on looking again at the fiscal rules. So he's already talking about a manifesto. And electoral reform. You can practically print this manifesto off right now, but it's not going to happen in three years. And what's he going to spend the three years doing? I know. Just preparing us for how much we're going to hate him. And it does remind me of my, you know, continual putting things off at