Morgan McSweeney

speaker

678 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 2 Jul

Morgan McSweeney’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · 2 Jul 2026 podcast

I think with VAT, I don't think that it would have been possible for us to say, going to an election and say, We're gonna put up VAT in the middle of a cost of living crisis.

I think voters would have rejected that in big numbers.

The second thing I think we wouldn't have been able to do is to have no tax policy.

So some of the arguments of what we might have been able to do is to say not tie our hands by saying, We'll tell you what taxes we'll put up later.

We might have been able to

say put up income tax by one P uh in return for more investment in the NHS and still won the election.

But You could have said when the Tories cut national insurance, you could have said this is a political stump, we're not gonna match it.

Yeah.

I I think it wasn't a mistake to say that we want to means test it, but it was means tested at too low a level.

Um I think mean setting some benefits for pensioners is is is the right thing to do.

But I think when you s w it was t it was set too low.

Um why did that happen?

I think

Probably speaks to not having enough of a plan, um and a new team came in, saw that there was massive overspend going on, felt the need to to to to rein it in and I think it was a it was a mistake.

I think it was one of those early mistakes and it and it defined the government in a way that really did us a lot of damage.

Shouldn't number ten have said to the Treasury

Yeah.

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