Keir Starmer vs Kamala Harris: a comparison | US election | New Statesman

K stama is in the US to meet with Joe Biden for quote an indepth discussion on a range of global issues of mutual interest uh is understood he won't be meeting either CA Harris or Donald Trump okay on to the first question Rachel I'm going to ask you this one and this is from fan and they ask is making tough choices in and of itself an ideological objective of this version of the labor party more important than any specific policy goal so I think this is a interesting question because even framing it in that way says something about the way labor is being perceived just a couple of months after winning the election I don't think if you're a government that's been in in power for two months you want people to be questioning whether you're more interested in looking like you are quote unquote making tough choices than actually achieving concrete policy goals and actually uh I think what K sta would like us to be thinking about his government is that it's not about projecting anything it's about being you know really pragmatic and it's not about ideology it's not about being from the left or the center left you it's about you know making things better and making things work that's the projection that he would like but the the impression that his government has given us uh is basically that that's their their default line in response to things making tough choices and obviously we've talked a lot this week about with during the winter fuel allowance as a universal benefit we talked a couple of weeks ago about K st's Downing Street speech where he said things can only get worse and uh this atmosphere of Doom and Gloom that labor really seemed to be leaning into uh in a way that is I think detracting from some of the things that they've done so even if you take the argument that they were handed a terrible inheritance by the conservatives 22 billion black holes you know all of that prisons crisis NHS crisis public sector pay crisis all of these crisis um they're trying to do things to fix those you've got the uh renters Reform Bill that they introduced in Parliament this week uh you've had the pay deals that are theoretically meant to mean an end to the industrial disputes that have ground the country to a halt um the uh move on prisoner release um which is very controversial but that is sort of intended to avert crisis like they are trying to do pragmatic things to make things better but they're not really talking about them as we're trying to do them to make them better they're talking about them in the context of we've had to make tough choices I think there's a missed opportunity there GE actually touches on this in his cover story for the new Statesman this week I know you talked to him on the podcast yesterday but there is this idea at the top of Labor that the most important thing is projecting competence uh and that competence is what lost the conservatives the election and that people people voted for labor because they trusted that labor could get things done in a way that the conservatives couldn't or weren't and so in that respect showing that you understand that people can't have everything and and therefore we do need to make serious tradeoffs that is part of the messaging it's part of showing that they understand the gravity of the situation um but it leads to a situation as this questioner points out where it almost looks like being tough for the sake of it is is the end goal which is not particularly helpful and I think there's a risk there uh as George outlines that in trying not to look weak K dmer and Rachel rofs in particular uh end up looking nasty cruel yeah uh which isn't very helpful either on K St making tough choices um is an ideological choice in and of itself I don't think we should pretend that there's a difference between being a pragmatic politician and being a politician that's imbued with ideology him taking away way money from pensioners is a policy choice because he could have got that money from elsewhere so he will try and frame it as um a purely practical pragmatic choice that we need to do to to stabilize the public finances when that's just not the case at all okay Freddy I want to stick with the US um Rachel there's a there's a question here from Colin do you want to put that one to Freddy Colin wants to know how is money used by a presidential campaign and why does more money matter if both sides have large amounts of money so obviously the the funding involved in US political races um makes UK political Finance story seem quite pathetic um but it's quite controversial over there should it not be it is a lot more we had about 4 billion do spent at the that last election which was almost double the amount that was spent in the 2015 2016 cycle so it's huge amounts of money uh what do they do with that they they mostly buy adverts essentially digital adverts TV adverts they also High their staffers um they they make posters they do what any campaign would do with it it's just the the scale is much larger does it matter if if both sides have it I mean that's the interesting thing if one side has lots of money and the other side doesn't then it matters hugely if both sides have the same amount of money then obviously they sort of cancel each other out it just means there's going to be uh a lot more adverts it's interesting you can sort of tell the the priorities of the campaign from where they um spend their money on adverts so for instance we're getting so much money spent by the camp Harris campaign in Pennsylvania uh in Michigan it was interesting actually they took out some adverts around Maraga of Donald Trump's uh hideout in in Florida of of that quite famous uh provocative speech from Barack Obama when he spoke about Trump's crowd sizes and he wasn't really talking about crowd sizes so they used that to sort of rile up Donald Trump so again it's a political weapon that they're going to use the other thing that people get upset about is the idea that if you've got uh individuals or individual companies donating large amounts to one campaign or the other that might influence what those campaigns do or even what those politicians do in office I mean there's a difference I would say this but between uh what is it you know swifties for Kamala raising $135,000 from sort of small donations and the CEOs of of big companies making sort of those donations or or is that something that people get anxious about that really they they shouldn't is there a is there a kind of cash for influence side of this I think completely that there is but that's sort of accepted in in the UK that it's not even though it does happen in the UK I mean if we look at the conservative party's donors and the access they've been getting to prime ministers in the past four year has been quite significant Lord crus and others they always end up becoming um party Treasurer that I mean that's controversial you know when people read about that and Ben Elliot and all the scandals around the conservative party in the past few years that they they don't like it here it's just much more accepted that that's the case um it's much more uh normal or usual for companies to be political to invest it's almost see I speaking to someone from um from Google the other day and they were talking about it in as a way like an investment you you just do it as part of your Investment Portfolio you just invest in a party and hope you get a return whatever that might be whether that's influencing Congress they invest in both Freddy though do them off you've got to remember that so much of this is um down ticket as well so much of it is not the presidential candidate it's also the Senate candidate the governor candidate the the the representative candidate even down to Da level uh you know you read KLA Harris's book when she first stood as district attorney um which is the lead prosecutor in in the city so um she talks about the fact that she needed to raise thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars just to stand as the da so it's it's it's completely um imbued in American politics that this is something normal to a much greater extent I mean you couldn't for instance imagine a counselor um holding huge fundraising uh dinners I mean they obviously hold fundraising dinners for conservative party associations what have you but it it's a completely different scale it's not as if the fact that they want to become a counselor is completely dependent on whether they can raise thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds so so yeah but we got so exactly we've got to remember it goes all the way down the ticket the other way that that money has massively influenced this particular US presidential election was really in the choice of CA Harris running as the as the Democratic nominee because arguably there is an argument that other Democrats didn't put their names forward in part because camela Harris was entitled to all of the money already raised for the Biden campaign because she was on the ticket and there's something about being named on that ticket means that you can access all the funds that have already been donated were she not to have been and a fresh candidate come were to come in it's not as straightforward as that person then has access to all the money that's already been built up in the in the treasure chest is my understanding I imagine that would have been a factor I think though in that particular really bizarre and unusual situation time was probably the the key factor like finding a finding a the a way to switch a candidate and and run that race although money comes into that as well like if you've had all your primaries already all over a country you don't want to have to try and figure out a way to redo them or do them on the quick when you're deciding in the middle of the summer Rachel Freddy thank you very much that's all we have time for right now but we will be back next Friday to answer more of your questions please do send them in any things you are burning to know about party conferences as Rachel said we kick off in Earnest this weekend with the liberal Democrats you can send them in via the link in the show notes or by leaving a comment on Spotify or YouTube