Rory Stewart

It's the problem of the Ming-Fa strategy.

He didn't come in saying,

Here's my big, bold message, and I'm going to tell the voters before, I'm going to tell my MPs before, and I'm going to tell the MPs after.

Let me speak as the Labour-friendly right-winger.

There were obviously two narratives that they could pursue.

I think you're less Labour-friendly than you were and less right-wing than you were as well.

Yeah, probably both.

I actually think that one of their problems is that when they think about the right-left divide, they're fixated with reform and green.

Actually, I think there are a lot of Lib Dem Tory voters who could be potential Labour voters, right?

So, there are a lot of the people that we go to talk to when we go to business events and talk about geopolitics who actually were very excited by Labour before the election, thought the Tories, particularly under Liz Truss, had blown their credibility on the economy.

Here was the Chancellor coming in saying, I care about growth, I care about deregulation, I'm going to keep taxes low, I'm going to be sensible in borrowing.

So there was a story, the grown-ups had taken over, we're serious, we're pragmatic, we're going to run a serious economy, we're going to get under control.

That, unfortunately, I'm afraid, was very damaged by the fact that instead of accepting when they saw the financial problems that they would come up with a pragmatic fiscal policy, they thought they'd do something cute, putting up employers' national insurance while claiming they wouldn't put up tax.

That made a lot of people sad.

and they haven't felt business friendly, deregulation friendly.

I know people like Peter Karl really want to do it, and I want to hear more from him.

I really want to see him saying, here are the big supply side reforms, here are the big deregulation, this is how we're business friendly, this is how we're entrepreneurial, right?

Or with the Lib Dem voter, let's see the kind of values, let's see the position more clearly on Trump, on geopolitics, on Europe.

You know, you've talked a lot about the fact that there was a huge opportunity

to get us all back by saying, let's be radical about Europe.