Zanny Minton-Beddoes

Mielestäni yksi keskustelua Cardiffissa on se, mitä meidän pitäisi tehdä Wailassa.

That's not cynical at all. It's just correct. I mean, that is the sort of backdrop. In some ways, it's sort of interesting. You know, Wales is a bit further ahead of the rest of the country on this. Yeah, you can't... I mean, it's the big...

The big issue underpinning all of our political debates right now. This government has talked a huge amount about getting growth going again. You all know this. Essentially stagnant productivity growth since 2008. That's why wages haven't risen. That's why the economy is in a funk. And when you have no growth, then the whole of politics becomes about who gets...

the bigger slice of a shrinking pie or a pie that's not growing. And so it becomes this kind of, do we spend more on this or do we spend more on that? And then the only way out is you borrow. We've borrowed a heck of a lot. We can't borrow anymore. The really interesting thing, one of the interesting things of the last week was basically that

the bond markets spoke and some of the candidates for labor leadership realized that the bond markets, actually James Carville, you know, in 1992, he was Bill Clintons consigliere and he said, you know, when I die, I want to be reincarnated as the bond markets because the bond market has all the power. And in this country, it's really true now. I mean, guilts go up and the government has, and everyone has said, oh no, no, we're not going to break the fiscal rules. No, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. And that's the reality that Britain's in. And the

Ja me olemme hyvin lähellä bond market crisisistä. Hieman enemmän huonoja poliiseja kuin yksi tai kaksi. Ja tämä maa on todella huono. Kertoisitko, mitä bond market crisis olisi?

Foreign and domestic investors no longer wanting to buy UK gilts unless they get a much higher premium for them, and as a result interest rates go up, and that hugely affects interest rates throughout the economy. And the UK, this is actually, I think, another result of Brexit, because we used to be seen broadly, we weren't part of the euro, of course, but we used to be seen partly...

big picture as part of Europe. Now we're a mid-sized economy on our own on the edge of Europe.

with a guilt market and a large amount that we need to borrow. And so we're relying on British investors, but particularly foreign investors, buying our guilts, and we have got a huge amount of debt. And that's the kind of constraint that British politics is in. And to get around that, I mean, I sound like a broken record, but you have to get the economy growing. And the ingredients to getting the economy growing are not, you know, they're well known,

You can't talk about both parties any longer. Especially not in Wales. Five parties now, or more. Everyone who's really looked at this knows that the keys to getting the British economy growing are planning reform, all of the things that make it easier to do business. I would say welfare reform is essential. Some forms of making it more encouraging businesses to invest. And then there is this

The juggernaut coming towards us all in the form of AI and the transformation that artificial intelligence is bringing to our economies. I don't see anyone really talk about it nearly enough, because it is, whether we like it or not, it's coming towards us like a high speed express train. And that's the environment we need to get growth. And I'm really optimistic about the UK in the sort of medium term. And I'll give you my ten second homily on the UK. If you look back

Pitäisikö tämä soittaa musiikkiin? Jos katsotaan 80 vuoden aikana, kaksi kertaa, UK on radikaalisesti muodostanut yhteistyötä valtion ja markkinan välillä ja johtanut maailmalla. Ensimmäinen kerta oli luotettavuus valtion, kun UK muodosti

what sort of social democracy was about, and everybody else copied us. And then the second time, more controversially perhaps, was the Thatcher revolution in the early 80s. Radical change, privatization, deregulation, the rest of the world copied. I have always thought that the UK is in the best place to come up with what a sensible state for the 21st century looks like.

And we haven't done it yet. I don't see it in this government. I had hoped it might be. Maybe it's the next one. But we ought to be having that conversation. What kind of tax system? What kind of benefit system? Much bolder reforms than we're talking about right now. It's a whole kind of different canvas. And if we don't say that to music, I hope somebody does.

that's piled up, would you agree, over years? I completely agree, but I sort of slightly tear my hair out when I hear that the latest set of proposals, which are, you know, cutting VAT on kids' menus and all of that. I mean, it was, you know...

It's gimmickry, it's not serious fiscal policy. Well, unless you've got a family of four. No, but of course, I feel for anyone who has to, I mean, it's going to be a long hot summer, and I get all of that, but it's actually not the way that you can really run fiscal policy in a country. You can't just think, I'm going to do three months to make these people happy here, three months to make...

She needs to sort of... And she's done it actually on the other side too with a whole bunch of tax policies. Whatever you think of the merits of them, VAT on private schools, scaring off the non-doms, all of these things, they were sending a signal more than they were trying to raise revenue. They were kind of showing up her sort of left-wing bona fides. It was not effective tax policy. Most of them have raised far less money than they thought. So it's been kind of tax policy by gimmickry because...

The government has refused to address its red lines of no change on income tax, no change on national insurance, which, well, they changed, they raised employer national insurance. You could raise more revenue if you wanted to quite efficiently by putting a penny on the rate of income tax. It wouldn't be popular, but you could do it.

a political system where nobody on any party is willing to say to people that actually some very tough decisions have to be made and we're still in a sort of never never land of politics and until that

Ennen kuin olemme valmiita keskustelemaan näistä asioista, voimme tehdä kaikkea kriittisesti. Sama asia kriittisesti. Yksi puolesta sanotaan, että pitää lisätä kriittisympäristöä, koska tunnistamme vaikutuksen Putinista ja niin edelleen. Mutta eikä kukaan ole valmis lopettamaan jotain muualta, joten tehdään kriittisesti. Jotkut poliittiset suosittelivat, että voi tehdä kriittisympäristöä, mutta loppumarkki sanoi, että ei voi tehdä sitä.