Scotsman Daily Bulletin Tuesday 28 May
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's daily video bulletin
00:09 for this Tuesday.
00:10 My name's Dale Miller, I'm Head of News at the Scotsman.
00:13 I'm joined by our Westminster correspondent,
00:15 Alexander Brown and Alex.
00:17 An election campaign underway
00:20 almost to the end of the first week.
00:22 I wanna get your take on how you think
00:24 the leaders are performing so far.
00:26 But let's talk about the front page of the Scotsman first.
00:28 Quickly, natural that we're leading on the election.
00:32 The Scottish Tories are making their pitch
00:34 in their official campaign launch today.
00:37 Douglas Ross is speaking up in Perthshire.
00:40 He's talking in Pete Wishart's seat.
00:42 Pete is the SMP or the party's longest serving MP currently.
00:47 And there will be a fight in that particular constituency
00:51 for the SMP to hold that seat.
00:52 Douglas Ross saying an SMP defeat
00:55 could end the Indy push for good.
00:57 It's a bold claim.
00:58 It's certainly what Douglas wants to talk about.
01:01 There's some coverage inside and across scotsman.com
01:05 about independence and whether it will actually
01:08 be a key battleground in this election.
01:10 Alex, we've started hearing about policy
01:14 over the past 48 hours,
01:15 but I just wanna get your take on the election so far.
01:19 How do you think the two key leaders in particular,
01:23 Sunak Starmer and to an extension of Swinney, are performing?
01:27 - Well, I think when it comes to conservatives,
01:29 you don't necessarily need my analysis.
01:31 We can just have Conservative Party HQs
01:34 after a leaked memo revealed that MPs were being sent
01:38 around a private email sent to MPs.
01:40 It wasn't supposed to be sent to Tory MPs,
01:41 but it was essentially criticising them
01:44 for not getting behind the party enough,
01:46 not doing enough to big up Rishi Sunak.
01:49 Ministers were openly cited for being critical of policy
01:51 on the broadcast waves as it was being announced.
01:54 So the general mood among the Tory party
01:56 is despair and denial.
01:59 Rishi Sunak started with an announcement
02:01 in the pouring rain that he explained after
02:04 was about looking like he was ready to get on with it
02:07 and the man for the job,
02:08 but in actuality, he looked unprofessional.
02:11 Yesterday, he was filmed doing football drills
02:14 with children and almost fell over the football.
02:17 It's not been good.
02:20 For Labour, there's not much they need to do.
02:24 The polling is so extraordinary for the Labour Party
02:26 that the criticisms coming at them from the Conservatives
02:29 tend to be more personal rather than about
02:32 what a Labour government might not actually do to Britain.
02:35 So far, we've had one of the chairs of the Tory party
02:37 called Kislama sleepy,
02:40 aping the language used about Joe Biden in America
02:43 by saying he's lying in bed
02:44 while Rishi Sunak is out on the job.
02:46 And then again, repeating it a few days later,
02:48 saying, "Oh, he had an extra half an hour in bed again.
02:52 "He's clearly not fit for the job,"
02:54 which is not really a rhetoric that cuts through.
02:58 I think Labour are in a pretty confident place
03:02 where the burden is not on them.
03:04 Even though they're the ones trying to win seats,
03:06 it almost feels like they're defending a lead.
03:08 They just kind of need to focus and get on with it.
03:11 And as for the SNP,
03:13 I mean, the Michael Matheson stuff came at a terrible time.
03:16 And I think there is real excitement among Tories and Labour
03:19 that the SNP are there for the taking now.
03:23 The fact that he was flanked by so many allies in the SNP
03:27 and defended as he came into the chamber
03:29 has really ruffled people.
03:32 And I think it's a terrible optic
03:33 to the SNP haven't quite realised.
03:34 So, the SNP are in trouble,
03:37 they haven't worked out how to deal with Labour,
03:38 and Labour are incredibly confident
03:40 and they're right to be so.
03:42 - Alex, my thoughts on political photos with sport.
03:46 Be careful if you can't play the game,
03:48 then it doesn't always end up looking good.
03:51 Look, policy, we know that things have shifted slightly.
03:56 We were talking about national service
03:58 across Sunday and Monday.
04:00 Some were calling it an unfunded gimmick.
04:02 It was a policy from Sunak
04:03 in their first big one of this campaign.
04:05 And now pensions is the talk today.
04:08 Just tell me about what the Tories and Rishi Sunak
04:11 are saying they'll do around pensions.
04:13 - So, essentially with the triple lock,
04:15 they're going to raise the income tax threshold
04:18 for pensioners so that they just simply won't get taxed
04:21 on income tax.
04:22 They're calling it triple lock plus,
04:24 which is presumably something they've workshopped.
04:26 And it basically means earnings will continue to rise
04:29 and the pensions will be saving money.
04:31 The Tories say it means by 2025,
04:33 the average pensioner will be saving £100 a year.
04:37 And by the end of the next parliament,
04:39 this will be £300 a year.
04:41 They're also, 'cause Labour have said
04:43 they will not stick with this.
04:44 They've said the Labour Party,
04:44 I think they've called it, and I've written this down,
04:46 they called it a retirement tax.
04:48 So they've come up with a new policy
04:49 and Labour not backing it now means it's a retirement tax.
04:53 But it's worth noting this costs billions of pounds,
04:56 billions of pounds.
04:58 It's another handout to pensioners
05:01 after the Tory party have said to the teenagers,
05:04 "You don't work hard enough,
05:05 we're going to make you do national service."
05:07 And I also think, having gone through the finances
05:09 and looked more analysis of it,
05:11 I don't think it necessarily holds up financially either.
05:13 Institute of Fiscal Studies said,
05:15 it's not going to deliver that sort of tax relief to pensioners
05:19 because they're not actually making that kind of savings.
05:22 The way they're doing it is they're just not implementing
05:24 plans for the crisis.
05:26 So half of this tax rise they're seeing off
05:30 would have come from the crisis
05:30 they were going to implement themselves anyway.
05:32 So it's a handout for boomers,
05:35 but it made itself onto the front page
05:37 of the Express and Telegraph,
05:38 which is exactly what as a policy it was designed to do.
05:42 - I know, but with both the national service policy
05:44 and this one, they're saying they'll fund it
05:46 through clamp down on tax evasion,
05:48 although a lack of detail exactly on how that will work.
05:51 Alex, just over the labour,
05:54 they've spoken this morning about a letter
05:56 signed by 121 businesses.
05:58 Clearly they, and Keir Starmer,
06:00 want to show that they have the backing of business.
06:03 Is that a fair assessment?
06:05 Is that why they're pushing this out?
06:07 - Yeah, I mean, if you think back to the year 2019,
06:11 when businesses were writing letters
06:14 saying if Labour wins,
06:15 that they'll have to pull everything out of the country
06:17 and condemning Corbyn in every single thing that they did,
06:21 it's a huge turnaround for where the party is.
06:23 And I think it's worth noting
06:24 that this isn't just businesses writing a letter.
06:26 This is the leaders of huge companies
06:29 that employ people all over the country
06:30 coming to the event.
06:31 Rachel Reeves is speaking today.
06:33 She will be speaking now as we speak.
06:36 And there will be businessmen there,
06:37 businesswomen there to promote the party.
06:40 And I think it's also interesting
06:41 that one of these businessmen
06:43 was actually trying to get a safe seat
06:45 for the Conservative Party.
06:46 There's a huge turn of supporters from the Conservatives
06:51 over to Labour among business.
06:53 And it was interesting,
06:55 'cause Sir Keir Starmer said in an interview overnight
06:57 that he was still a socialist
06:59 and he still remained committed to those ideals.
07:01 But the language that you hear from the Labour Party
07:03 is about fiscal straitjackets.
07:05 It's about following the financial rules
07:07 and balancing the economy.
07:09 They've tried to be this party of business,
07:11 which is exactly what Cameron and George Osborne
07:14 did so successfully to win a majority in 2015.
07:17 And it seems Labour are pulling from that playbook.
07:19 So it is working.
07:22 - It's interesting.
07:23 The messages from Reeves has been about
07:25 sort of talking national insurance
07:27 and protecting the levels
07:28 where it's out of their business again today.
07:30 So clearly Labour wanting to sell
07:32 their economic credentials to voters.
07:35 Alex, thank you very much for joining us.
07:37 You can read all the latest from Alex
07:39 and the wider politics team at scotsman.com.
07:42 Just follow politics in the navigation bar
07:45 and you can get us on all your socials
07:47 and for a full wrap of the latest day of election campaigning
07:50 pick up a copy of the Scotsman tomorrow.
07:52 Alex, thanks to you.
07:54 And thanks to our viewers for joining us.
07:56 (upbeat music)
07:59 (upbeat music)