what's your story you know what are you there to do why would talent join you rather than the competitor and I think we have we haven't done a good enough story right the domain itself has not allowed people to make the difference I was a sky I was a media broadcasting executive when Ofcom was set up by the Blairite government we were told don't you worry your pretty little heads it'll be small it'll have a small secretaria and now look at it it's been a behemoth you know it's trying to regulate every single dark corner of the internet. Welcome to the latest episode of the LFG podcast with me, James Newport, and Rebecca Ray. We're excited to bring you a really interesting episode today. Uh we're going to be talking about being a CFO of a major telecommunications company. We're going to be talking about uh that change to being a minister in government and we're going to be talking about what the future of British business should look like. Fortunately, we have an excellent guest with us today who is not only the shadow secretary of state for business and trade, but was previously the CFO of Sky and uh is the MP for Arendor and Southdowns. Andrew Griffith, thank you so much for joining us. >> It's great we've got you as a guest for all these topics. It's almost like we pick the topics based on the guest, but uh you know that that requires so much forward planning. Uh no, excellent to have you with us. Um it would be great to dive in and kind of uh before we go into the politics and the stuff which probably most our listeners will be expecting to discuss, I'd love to talk about your experiences as a CFO uh of a major company. And uh for those that don't know, you were were you one of the youngest or the youngest >> on the day I was appointed? >> Not so much not so much after that, but at the time Yeah. Yeah. >> the youngest CFO of a Footsie 100 company. That's really impressive. Like how did what was your journey to that and like what was it like being in that role? Um look complete serendipity in terms of the journey to get there. It was a wonderful um company. Um you know unlike many British companies um you know raised a lot of capital was going for scale right from the get-go. It was television technology businesses tend to uh need to scale fast. um unusually a big company in for example telecoms that wasn't an incumbent right most big telecoms companies one way or another had their ownership back once upon a time in the state you know the British telecom or uh other companies like that so we we had to fight for every single customer you know by the end it was tens of millions of customers across seven different markets in Europe but each one of them had had a choice and and we'd had to compete for them and fantastically accountable nowhere to hide you you know, when you're in a big public company, you've got daily consumer statistics. You can see whether it was a good day or a bad day for sales, you know, how's advertising going, you know, a bell weather on the economy. So, um, so I love that. And it wasn't it wasn't pre-ordained. I was an accountant. Um, and I joined the company, you know, in a in a pretty lowly role, but the the big thing going back to your core mission is it grew. I mean it is one of you know together with ARM I think it was one of a few UK companies that started up and ended up as one of the biggest companies in the Footsie 100 which is the index of biggest companies on the stock exchange. So it really was a story of of growth. >> Yeah. And you were you were in that obviously massive scale up period right and I think one of the things uh a lot of our listeners kind of talk about is opportunity for scaleups to succeed in the country. right now it feels like your best option if you want to scale up in this country is go sell to the US like get sold get bought out. Uh but you you lived kind of through that growth. Uh what were kind of the uh I guess you know as a CFO what did you see as your role as part of that like well weirdly it was never about the numbers. I mean I always said it was about the words not the numbers. You know, the numbers are a hygiene. Don't get me wrong, you've got to comply and all of that, but it is, you know, a a largely a job of communication both internally within the organization because you're part of the senior leadership team. What's your story? You know, what are you there to do? Why would talent join you rather than the competitor? And bear in mind, most of our time at Sky, we were a challenger. You know, when when it started, you know, people, we were sort of below the salt. You know, we were not part of the establishment at all. the establishment had tried to strangle Sky at birth and so you're in a war for talent from day one as to why you were going to succeed. Then you're obviously trying to make sure you know consumers understand what you're trying to do. Again, lots of technology change. It started pretty much in the age of Valve broadcasting, you know, and by the end it was pure streaming. >> Valve. >> Exactly. Exactly. Um it wasn't quite it wasn't quite that old, but um but not far off. And by the end of course it was all you know fully digitalized streaming services as you'd see today. So you know quite a lot of different technology shifts in that period. And again we were unusual and that we weren't afraid to invest before making profit. You know people often talk about the UK it's a the challenge is you know people want their money back. They want their dividend. Institutions are risk averse. Um, and if you tell a good enough story, I think that you can, maybe it's different in the markets today, but certainly in those days, you could set out your stall as to why it was better to invest and get longer term returns through capital. Uh, which is very important. I mean, definitely if you're going to try and scale today and build big businesses in either technology or maybe in new um capital consumptive things like data centers or energy, you you can't do those on a short-term yield basis. So one way or another, whether it's by telling better stories or by fixing some of the attributes of our capital markets, um you definitely need to fix that. Um but you know, at the end of the day, success begets success as well and and we were a successful product. We were growing. It was a good category to be in at that time. >> Um how do you think that the scaleup kind of scene or environment has changed since you were you were in it? And do you think it's for the better, for the worst? Um, look, I think those things are they're they're neutral in terms of the sort of value judgments. I mean, there's way way more private capital. I mean, in those days, I mean, we when we listed the company, um, it was very early days. Um, because there wasn't the abundance of private capital. There is, and you know, I'm older than I look. This was a while ago. You know, I was I was at Sky 20 years and I exited 5 years ago. So, this was a while ago. but you didn't have private equity really at all. Um, you know, even the debt markets weren't as liquid and as sophisticated as they are today. So, on the positive, you've got way more choices. Secondly, technology, which didn't used to be a huge feature of the UK market, has very many more proof points. There are far more successful exits now that you could point to. If you're trying to raise capital, you can point to successful exits, people that have done it before. Uh, there are more serial entrepreneurs in in the UK market. Uh but the third and final point I think is you've just got more choices, right? I mean this is literally a true story. We looked probably 15 years ago at could you move the listing from London to NASDAQ. It was after.com where everything that had a dot at the end of its name, you know, got another couple of turns at least on the multiple. And so every company would look at could you move your listing in those days. But that was before the Bloomberg Road Show. It was before Zoom calls and and literally people said, "Well, if you want to move your listing, there were some UK companies that listed on NASDAQ." The UK cable sector, which was our big competitor, got all of its money, even in those days from NASDAQ. But there were real world frictions as well. I mean, literally, I was told, well, you know, take a photograph of your family because you're going to spend six weeks on the on the road in the US. You're going to be going to Witchetta and Phoenix, Arizona and all of these, you know, pretty big pools of capital, but you're going to physically have to do a lot of shoe leather. Now, in a wonderful thing, you know, the internet has removed that point of friction. In fact, it's removed almost every point of friction. So, whether you're a company or a state, you you've got to be on it, right? You've got to like be able to say, why are we why should the UK be a talent magnet, right? People have got choices. There are lots of other very livable cities. I'm a patriot. I happen to think this is a great country. There's very few cities on earth that can beat London at its best. But but you've you've got to make that case in a much more positive, thoughtful sense than you had to by, you know, even 20 years ago by default where, you know, there weren't lots of Liverpool cities in the Gulf or Asia. Um there weren't as many other people on the bid competing for talent. And the same would be true of capital. So like it's it's such an interesting I wish we had like more time to to cover it because you know it's it's so interesting to go through like your experience in being a CFO in that kind of environment how scaling up selling you know uh listing these kind of options >> to the tragedy is there aren't a gazillion of those stories in the UK but but there's there's more than we all think we shouldn't talk >> and I think your point actually like it's super important because we've had uh previous guests on here but also people in in our community we talked who who are like actually these success stories in the UK are so valuable to be able to point to them and learn from them and and use it as an example to say well it can happen in UK cuz it's happened before is like so important uh and it raises a question of why did you why' you leave that all behind like obviously it sold you could have gone on to say ultimate commercial world but you you chose the uh the life of a politician what what made you uh take that route well I don't see it as being the life of a politician I actually see it as a tour of duty and and and my pitch to a lot of people is look you don't have to see this you know we're very lucky you know we have uh a great state of affairs in the UK much like other developed economies and people can do a tour of duty right they may have a career in the military and then they may go into public service you know mine was in business I exited at I hope a young enough age that I had the energy and the mental acuity to to adapt to a new domain and and I'd always thought probably unfashionably that it is a really important thing right I mean parliament wherever you think of it whatever you think about politicians parliament is the source of laws and laws are the source of competitive advantage or disadvantage so my passion is business and the economy right that's really my thing others can fix other aspects of society but I don't think there's anything more important because you know in my lifetime we have slipped down the world prosperity rankings right if you were born when I was born you'd sort of been in the top 10 around the world. There's always a few outliers. You know, now the UK is competing to be roughly about the 30th most prosperous country in the world. Not good, right? Not acceptable. And and we can fix it. We sort of done a lot of it to ourselves. We become a bit sclerotic. We need to go on a diet as a as a country. You know, we need to improve the clock speed of how we make decisions of how government works. Not to pick on government, it's not the only thing, but it is a big thing. And I mean government spends about 45p in the pound. So if if that is a sea anchor, you know, rather than tugging you forward, then that is going to slow down your economy. You're then not going to be as competitive. You're going to lose talent. You're going to lose capital. You're going to lose businesses in a world that ultimately is more mobile than it ever used to be. And I kind of don't want that for my kids, right? you know, you can get to a certain level of of lifestyle, but you want to pass things on to, you know, not just my kids, yours and others, you know, in a better place than we found it. And and I can't reconcile that if we as a country are getting poorer, you know, we're having worse, you know, lifestyle outcomes. Um the, you know, what do they say? The the life expectancy has sort of peaked and is now slightly uh rescending. Um and we're definitely just not as affluent. I think the UK is I know the UK on average is not as prosperous as the worst performing US state. And if you just look at those curves, I think it's Mississippi. If you look at those curves, they're going in the wrong direction. No way. No way. We're the birthplace of the industrial revolution. You know, we've got great cities, we've got creativity, the world wants the services that we provide. We've still got great tech, great science. So, I just don't I kind of just don't accept that. And the the flip side is signing up for a tour of duty to go into government, public service or parliament to try and influence things. >> When you when you zoom out, why do you think that Britain has ended up going into this kind of sclerotic state? >> I think the big category error, I do think about that a lot and I'm very humble. I don't know the answers to everything. I think we just we as in the the political class if you like the leadership um have not understood how competitive the world has changed. Um so when I was a minister the the officials who I who I never actually decry I think a lot of this is actually about leadership. I think it's very fashionable to sort of talk about the machinery of government and yes there's some things I would change but actually I do think quite a lot of it's about leadership and people should look a bit closer to home. But I would get the most wonderful advice about every single twist and turn of UK policy development since 1948. So you'd ask a question, you know, how are we going to make our banks more competitive? How are we going to get more capital to small businesses and and you'd get this diet tribe perfectly well researched? But he would never it would never say, well, this is what Singapore's done and this is what Australia's done and this is what you know they're doing in Indonesia and minister there's something quite novel going on in Estonia. none of that whatsoever. So I think a combination of outsourcing quite a lot of our thinking in quite a lot of domains to the EU. You know, not a value judgment, but if you outsource quite big areas of your corpus of law, then you just stop thinking about them because you're out with a world in which you can change them anyway. And a failure by, you know, if you like, a failure by the state to appreciate that you've got real competitors out there that just didn't exist before. And that was partly the thing we were talking about. Everything's more mobile. The frictions in life have disappeared. That has done wonderful things for the world economy, but it means you've got to be on it more. And I don't think I just don't think we were on it more. I think that's sorry I was going to say I think it's like an interesting um uh element about this like competitive relationship because you have when I was in government you had this issue of like uh ministers would often want to know what the others other countries were doing mainly to spin that we weren't as bad as people were saying because you know the G7 are we're number three in the G7 so you know it's not the worst. Uh but equally people didn't look at other countries as competitors in like a in like a healthy way as in like well people have the opportunity to change location to do you know to work across the world >> why wouldn't they go to Dubai why wouldn't they go to Singapore and therefore how do we attract that instead there's this like uh I just never felt like countries were we were never looked like that there was always like an element of benchmarking but it was it was often a defensive technique is that how you felt as a minister was that often how you got information on Yeah, with with knobs on I mean it was I mean you still see it um shoot any politician of any flavor that talks about the G7, right? The G7 is with the exception of the US and unless you've got a California sort of tucked away somewhere in Stoke on Trent, we're not going to be the US. So with the exception of the US, the G7 is just the club of other slow growing problematic countries. Right? If that's your peer group, you are running in the veterans race, right? that that is the the it will never lead you to the outcome of looking at Singapore Dubai, Indonesia, Jakarta, you're in the wrong you're in the wrong place and in any business if you set yourself up against the wrong peer group and you're right it was never it was never used you may have had a better experience than me. I never got advice about what other countries were doing. It was sometimes used as a sort of a communication tool. Yeah. As you say, to sort of post post rock post justify something and say, "Oh, well, we're maybe not too bad because we're still in the middle of the pack on the G7." Completely the wrong pace car. Um, so that that is one thing I would change. I literally did say to my private office once, I will pay for you personally to go to another country and do some research and find out, you know, what you can bring back. Because for us, I mean, the Commonwealth, I mean, again, I I did a law degree. I'm not a lawyer, but the Commonwealth uses the same sort of form of law. I mean, if you ever you can copy and paste the sort of GitHub version of of law, juristprudence, is to look at the Commonwealth. So, we had that as an English-speaking asset. You know, in Abu Dhabi, they've adopted the common law as a dispute rec resolution mechanism for their entire financial service industry. It's like our law. It's our DNA that they've transplanted. Now, that just makes the world super competitive because you can get on a plane and issue the same product. Ireland did that for a lot of financial services products. A lot of unit trusts and things like that uh are registered in Ireland just because their listing authority still spoke English, but they would turn things around in a week instead of six weeks. >> Yeah. >> Failure to understand how competitive the world is. >> Yeah. I was just I was just wanted to bring it back to the tour of duty >> thing that you mentioned. Why why do you think it is that not as many people from business and from the private sector go into politics? >> Well, I probably got a screw loose, but I'm going to try and fix it. And I I think it's it's that's reconnecting people with that sense of mission, right? It's not hard. It's not an easy life, right? It's not full of adornments. Um you know, you're publicly exposed. You know, everyone understands the the downsides. The flip side, the positive, the reason why the secret intelligence services, you know, great universities, the military attract talent, civil servants, they attract talent is because of that sense of mission. So, okay, I'll put up with these hygiene factors that are not particularly conducive because I think I can make a difference. And I think we have we haven't done a good enough story, right? the domain itself has not allowed people to make the difference right and that causes quite a lot of cynicism so implicit in what I say is there has to be a change a discontinuity right you can't go you know in my naive moments I want a cluster of people from business not just big business but small businesses entrepreneurs founders even people who failed but tried I want them to come into government with us in 2028 or 2029 my pitch has to be look it's not going to be a repeat of the It's not just going to be, you know, talk the words but then fail to deliver. Um that there'll be a discontinuity with the past. There'll be a fresh approach. You know, we'll go in with a clear set of plans, right? Who's going to sign up to to do that if they don't know what they're signing up to? That's a big problem. So, you've got to be as we conservatives now are starting to litigate in advance what it is that you would do. And again, ideally that would be fewer things, but do them well because if you have a whole smorgas board, you're just not going to do very much of it. And then I think people would because they are essentially patriotic and although a lot of people have left and some of my friends you know have done so and that's regrettable a lot haven't right a lot have decided to stay and fight and that this is our country and that we can do better and that we will do better again and that's probably a rallying cry that we haven't had on the what I would say the right for 20 30 years either right because it's all been fairly benign now it is not benign a very clear divide. People can see the direction of travel we're going in. You know, a lot of people don't like it, which is why the government's about 17% in the polls. Um, and I think people will march to that flag if we can articulate it clearly enough. >> I think um Labour uh tweeted today something like uh Britain Britain's going to turn a corner this year. Um >> the question is in which direction is it going to get better or worse? And and look, I I I don't wish ill of any government actually. I mean, I can be ecumenical enough. You know, the government could have come in, they got a big majority, they'd had 14 years to plan. They could have tackled some of the grand challenges of society. You know, aging is not partisan. You know, how do you fix a socialized health care system that's over centralized? How do you, you know, radically adopt new technology and government? How do you do autonomous transport and public metro systems? You know, they could have done all of those things. You know, a little bit Nixon to China. It was probably easier for them to do some really heavy lifting on public service reform because their motives wouldn't be doubted whereas ours unfairly would be. They haven't done any of those things which a bit frustrating. So we're going to just use the next three years to plan in obsessive detail what we will do on day one 2 3 and four of the next government which therefore will be more revolutionary than evolutionary. Do you think that was done with previous conservative governments that came in? >> Not as far as I could see. No. And what do you think like uh what do you think the blocker is from doing that? Because you can either like assume that politicians on the whole just aren't sufficiently capable of doing that stuff. And and I don't you know maybe that's one stream. The other stream is like they they don't care enough. And I don't I don't get that sense from most politicians I meet. There is like a strong desire to to make a change. But it feels that some of these things are blindingly obvious to do. Uh but there's massive inertia in the system to not do it. Where I mean another twist in that question would be where in government have you seen things radically changed and improved and can we emulate that? Like what do we need to do to change this to to flip into a system where actually you can deliver this stuff? Um I don't want to oversimplify. I mean to me you know you've got to get a team that works well together. You've got to have goal congruence, which very rarely exists in politics. There aren't the same forcing mechanisms there are in business, but it's not impossible in the face of challenge to get that. But you've got to have a clear set of plans. Um I haven't got any really good examples unless you go way back to you know when you were probably not even here but back into the sort of late 70s and 80s when I was I was very very young but I just caught the tail end of that moment of when a country you know looked a bit despotic and and certainly the economy was was moribund and it did reboot itself and it's the rebooting that excites me about the opportunity going forward in government you can do an immense amount it's the ultimate scale opportunity if you think about it. um Rishiunak one day decided he wanted to set up a new department for science innovation and technology and and it happened right area you know I'm disappointed about how it's actually panned out but area the advanced research and invention a innovation agency you know was a new institution spun up capitalized you know people hired so so you can do stuff in government but those are rare examples where I think actually there was a bit of a plan and bit of a forethought the the experience I had in that 19 to 24 period was there just weren't enough plans and there definitely wasn't enough goal congruence in the sense even if you had a majority of 80, right? Pretty precious. That's your fuel in the tank, right? That's unspent capital. But if if even with a majority of 80, if 41 people desent, then you can't drive that through. And if you haven't litigated in advance what you're going to do as a team, as soon as it gets a little bit bumpy and someone says, you know, we want, you know, free school holiday meals or whatever it is, if 41 people, you know, go a little bit wobbly, you can't deliver it. And I just picked that as an example. But the key point to me, the bit that's got to be different, I think, but almost irrespective of the quality of the people and how much you reform the machinery of government is you've got to have a plan. Right? Now someone called Nuke Gingrich in America you know came up with this thing called contract with America again it's not overly novel right other people have done this have used their time in opposition to come up with a clear set of plans select or you know self-identify a group of people who all sign up to that and say right this is the thing that we need to do and we accept the trade-offs we understand them this is a clear set of plans a bit you know Trump too I don't agree with all of his policies but Trump v2 who versus the chaos of Trump v1 right there was a clear sense of some better quality people around and and some prior thinking about what you would do in your first 100 days so irrespective of party politics I think that's the reboot that our system needs and what's a what's a big blockers in your mind of like attracting that talent in obviously you mentioned about the yeah the negatives you'll know about the press the exposure etc going to public life you obviously have that less if you're not actually a politician you're just advisor etc. Um but for instance, let's say if you were a if you're going back in as a minister um are you going to limit yourself or are you going to lobby for more special advisers is one point like currently you I guess before you you may I don't know if you had special advisors or not but secretary states generally have like three or four right >> it feels like you need a much larger team than that >> is that something which needs to be changed >> I think it's one one very small ingredient along the way um and and look there have been some effective ministers Michael Gove was an effective minister. He knows I didn't agree with everything he did in his in his last ministerial role around trying to confiscate people's free holds, but he was effective within his terms, right? Because he was able to come up to come up with the ideation and then drive it through and then get legislation, which is what ultimately a government is is able to do. So I I do think a lot of that is about the leadership. Some people say you need a few more special advisers. Fine. Some people say you need a lot of civil service reform. I agree, but in the sense of more performance management, I don't think the individual people in the civil service are bad or mad. I think there's a little bit more about the goal alignment, clarity, and again, if they don't know what the minister wants, doesn't matter how strong or weak the organization is, you're not going to get that sort of result. I think a huge role for the legitimate appointments that any government can make. So people who are non-executives on departmental boards, the the tyranny actually of all of the different arms length agencies, you know, I was the city minister. I had a bold plan for reform which we drove through a lot of it, but a lot of it was opposed by the very regulators who were self-interested in that. So things like the financial conduct authority, a huge regulatory body, a lot of it, its role had never been litigated by parliament. Parliament, for example, never never asked the Financial Conduct Authority to probe into the diversity and equality policies of the entire UK financial sector. Right? There's not a single line in parliament where everyone anyone ever gave that instruction. But because they went feral, you know, they decided and all regulators do this to a greater or lesser extent. They amieba like they just creep more things to themselves. I was a sky. I was a media broadcasting executive when Ofcom was set up by the Blairite government. We were told, "Don't you worry your pretty little head. It'll be small. It'll have a small secretaria. It'll just confine itself to, you know, the most strategic issues. It will support and champion the sector." And and now look at it. It's I mean a behemoth, you know, it's trying to regulate every single dark corner of the internet. You know, again, it's not, you know, it's not one thing or the other. It's not the extremities but there is this just this nature in arms length bodies that is where those that I can't persuade to do a tour of duty in elected office. There's a huge role for you know private sector not to fetishize it but you know private sector people who had experience of leading organizations have got a huge role to play. Uh and then final one I've you know which we have adopted as a policy so will happen under the next conservative government is our ambassadors. you know, some of our ambassadors are doing, you know, dark state secret stuff with, you know, other intelligence agencies around the world, but many of them aren't. And and they're they're a front door for British exports and business and trade, right? Until this week, most of the British ambassadors in Latin America, for example, quite a lot in Asia, you know, they're their economic promotion functions. no reason at all why we shouldn't have chairman, chief execs of big organizations, people from other backgrounds representing us rather than just finding, no disrespect, someone who's, you know, flown a desk for a few years in the FCDO and saying, "Congratulations, you're now our ambassador to X, Y, or Z." A very clear change, very binary. You know, tone matters. Culture beats strategy. And if you if you change a lot of the people, you will get a different culture. you will have a more mercantile approach if the people who are manning our embassies have by nature been selling you know and growing you know British PLC for for decades. I just wanted you to pick up on what you were saying about regulators. >> Other than kind of changing personnel within them to be more, you know, from a private sector background, how how do you think you do kind of constrain, you know, to or stop them from going off peace in that way? >> Well, you just got to put a barrel hoop around the size. I mean, if if you just make I mean, there there are regulations that need to be paired back because in their defense, a lot of them would say, well, hang on, Parliament's asked us to do that, right? Net zero is a very good example. Almost every regulator ended up being asked as a function of the net zero act when he whatever it was they they their own mandate was expanded and and that that's on parliament and so you need to make clearer decisions up front. Kem talks about doing fewer things well which is a good business mantra. Um so there's the corpus of law that you need to pair back and and make sure they're really only doing the bare necessity. fewer regulators. I mean, they do just spawn like top seat. So, we absolutely need fewer regulators. My party opposed the football governance regulator. You know, great successful British industry, which I happen to know an awful lot about from my 20 years in in broadcasting. You know, I never saw that the theory of harm that said you need to spawn an entire new regulator. You know, if there's one or two issues, there must be other ways of solving those. So fewer regulators, proper chainsaw stuff. Some of them we will need to go but again we'll need to talk about that in advance so that everyone accepts the tradeoffs and says you know okay some of these risks may crystallize but we still think net net we will have a faster clock speed we will be a more agile country without all of these different apparatus. Uh, and then I just think you have to at some point put a barrel hoop and say, "Nope, you've got your 300 people or whatever it is." And you're going to have to make prioritization calls as to what really within your domain, you really need to do because if we just constantly give you more and more people, of course, like any any human organization, it's not a value judgment, you will find things to do to make them busy. If I wanted a smaller marketing budget at Sky, it wasn't to go through and try and, you know, pair off everyone's individual work. It was to say, look, ultimately, we need fewer creative people because by definition, they're going to come up with some great ideas and they're going to want to spend money and they're going to want to have their ideas backed. So, you got to start with fewer people. >> Well, there's the um the thing people say about it with the civil service department. If it's doing well, they hire more people. And if it's doing badly, >> they hire more people. It's a it's an interesting one of like how much this spawns from politicians and how you change that uh that incentive structure, right? Because a lot of the uh like mission creepers is normal organizations DNA. Like organizations grow larger, they hire more people if they can. They'll get more budget if they can like Osma Treasury. That's what you that's what you see. But uh the issue as well is politicians are very incentivized and interested in doing more. They hate saying no, don't they? They hate saying no. I mean, I was a finance director. I made peace. I made peace with being the bad cop, you know, about a year into my role as finance director because that's you. Someone has to hold the ring and and say, you know, no, that that can't you can't have the resources to do that. We've got to make tradeoffs and difficult choices. I think we've forgotten a lot of that along the way. Being optimistic, I think that I think the conversation is changing. I think the conversation about growth is changing. I think we're all within a a much broader group than just my party, you know, much more versant in the conversation about growth starting to benchmark ourselves against other countries and say, "Hang on, yeah, you know, it isn't all great." Uh expand the the set of peer groups. you know, you guys have have really driven um a conversation about the need for growth. Uh and I think young people are increasingly, you know, what does growth mean? Growth can be quite abstract, a bit like talking about the economy or GDP. But but if it means look, I can't get a job, right? I've done everything that's the states expected of me. I've got good grades. I've worked hard. I've been diligent. I've borrowed a heinous amount of money to go and, you know, get myself credentialed. and and you're not delivering your part of the bargain because the economy is not growing. And so I can see there are shops closing in on my high street. The local pub that I used to go to is no longer there. And I'm now having this really miserable experience of putting in hundreds of applications and not being able to find employment. That that's a sort of more visceral thing than the abstract, you know, looking for growth. that people are people are joining the dots and and that is why you know hundreds of thousands of young people the biggest cohort of people that are immigrating is people under the age of 30. Um now again I'm a bit too balanced to be a good politician because you know we always we always used to have you know export some young people if you go to Australia they were building bridges and buildings with British people and that's always a good thing right but I think now it does feel it's you know it's more a push factor than a sort of pull factor from other countries. Yeah, there's a difference, right? There's a very like and it's difficult because these things don't come out in the numbers either at all or for a very long time. But there is there's a very clear sense that like people who are ambitious who want to drive your normal sectors which will be kind of welcomed here and where people would stay they are going abroad. It's not just the people who are like I want to have a more relaxing life in Australia >> but I'm going to come back in 5 years. It's actually people who are like I want to start a company. I want to work in finance or something. We're historically well known for now like I should go to the UAE. >> Yeah. Now a good this is all fixable. So So I mean now actually I'm always more positive than I have been for a very long time because I think Conservative Party is back in business. It doesn't have to be the only voice but it is a strong voice of this sort of market friendly you know opportunity seeking you know center right. So there's a voice back that I think had lost its way. I think, you know, it wasn't it wasn't on brand with the sort of things it was actually encapsulating. >> What do you think changed there? >> Um, well, a thumping defeat was pretty uh catalytic. No, genuinely. Um, you know, I think that that actually has rebooted the party. You know, this would be a forward-looking metric that I wouldn't expect to be in the polls today, but if you look at the the generation of Conservative me members of parliament elected in 2024, there's a real discontinuity there. I think they're very talented as a cohort. Um I think a lot of people that were, you know, they perhaps been through government. They were just sort of hanging on were cleared out by the electorate. Now that sounds very brutal and and we lost some good friends and some people who should, you know, have got a lot to offer. Uh but there was also people that that that weren't in that in that cohort. So as a party, we're now we're just now more coherent. Um, and then you go back in opposition where you're not dealing with the hurly burly and day-to-day short-term horizon of government and you know maybe like anyone who's lost their job you sort of go back and think right what do I really want to be you know what are my true values what if I'm not captured by the dayto-day what are we really here to do and I I think you're seeing that that reflexive behavior now uh come through from the conservatives like what are we really here to do right we're not really here to go and tie up British business in red and green tape. Right? We're not really here to ape the ang language of the left on diversity. We believe in opportunity, but we don't really want to go along with some of these institutional uh concepts that we got ourselves suckered into government. And you know, to a degree some people who were just along for the ride and didn't have that philosophical adherence have departed for other shores, right? So, so you what you're left with a survivor bias, but you're left with people who really care, who are absolutely signed up to this sense of mission of getting our country uh back. And there's nothing quite as motivating as watching 400, you know, people who are in in my view doing real damage to our country, damage to our constitution, and damage to our standing in the world. Now, not everyone will agree with that, but you know, you have to accept that that can be a motivating factor and a uniting factor as well. >> >> And do you uh like when we look we step back and look at like the kind of big issues you'd want to address. Obviously one is kind of we touched on is the size of the state the operation of the state etc. The tax system is another one which would be great to talk >> complicated. Yeah. >> Yeah. And another one which would be great to kind of touch on as well is the the energy the situation of how do we like a big blocker no doubt is on your mind as shadow sector of business >> is just the sheer cost of energy. it's prohibitive uh to business right now, but also if we're talking about the future industries of AI building data centers, well, they're they take a lot of energy and right now, you know, we don't we can't service that. So, you know, take whichever one you want to focus on first, you know, the tax side of the energy side, but so my my my four four things, right, everyone should have a rough framework for whatever it is they do. So, we need cheaper energy. Um, and we need cheaper energy now. So that's things like not signing ourselves up to European energy systems that are going to add even more cost in the immediate term. Um is getting a proper future roadmap that isn't just expensive renewables but looks at things like small modular reactors and tries to bring that forward right tries with a real sense of mission you know like a military crisis to actually bring forward what will inevitably be quite a long-term road map. Um and it means fully exploiting the oil and hydrocarbons that we've got today. Uh those forms of chemical energy are still superlative in terms of the the the energy storage, their uh utility, uh the fact that you can, you know, even repurpose existing uh materials to do that. So there's a huge piece on energy. That's that's number one. Uh secondly, as you say, we need a tax system that's much simpler. uh you know I look at IR35 but almost every tax has unintended consequences. Again I don't think most politicians are are mendacious or malicious but they are woeful at spotting the unintended consequences whether it's the family business death tax uh whether it's what happened on IR35 that you know ended up you know really crucifying a lot of people who were trying to freelance or be self-employed. Of course they're often the future businesses and employers themselves. It's part of that pathway. See, if you hack down all of the young seedlings through an excess of an HMRC sort of culture war against wealth creators, um then you're going to have some unintended consequences and real damage. So, we got to get a better tax system and we don't have long enough to go through every element of that. But there are some things that I'm very happy my party are doing now. Things like promising to scrap stamp duty. That is not a business tax, but it's a real friction tax. It's like a friction that rolls through the whole economy. And if you don't have a market as big as the housing market working well, right, you think about the biggest single economic participation of all of as individuals is is the housing market, right? And it and it opens up other things. >> It's where a lot of wealth in in Britain lies. I mean, majority of it, it's >> there's a lot of there's a lot of wealth trapped anyway, which is suboptimal because we'd want that for more productive uses, but also you you buy a house, you then, you know, maintain it. you you you know perhaps you know redecorate it, you furnish it. These are really big economic transactions. So if you slow the whole thing down, you are going to have an economy that is subdued as a consequence. Um so you you've got to have a tax system that works. A big piece about tax to me is also the values that it sends. So we're there's always people are always going to pay more tax than than would be ideal. Ultimately, the way you lower taxes is by making tough choices on things like welfare elsewhere, size of the state, which we will we will do and develop an appetite for. But you've also got to try and make that as simple a system as possible. So, I I'm very not worried. I'm I'm excited about the opportunity of recreating startup Britain, of of getting a new generation of entrepreneurs before your time, but Lord Young, David Young, was Mrs. Thatcher's enterprise minister and and did a great deal for entrepreneurship and and did that over many decades. Things like the um enterprise allowance scheme. It's so easy these days in one level to build a business to take a side hustle. You can you know on your app you can find a global audience. You know you can build a supply chain of seven different countries remotely and virtually. But the things that the government's responsible for are really really hard. Right? So, we're making it hard to open a bank account. Oh my god. You know, you're treated as if you're guilty of some heinous crime until proven otherwise. It's it's getting harder. So, the third thing on my list is the employment market. You just want to be able to hire people more flexibly. That that's a two-sided market. It will give young people more opportunity to get into it. If the state sets the price and has these really chunky pieces of regulation, you know, trying to micro regulate hugely diverse contracts between individuals and and enterprise, that's very difficult. And and so the government's going in completely the wrong direction on this bill that I've always called the unemployment bill. So third thing is you need flex a flexible workforce, which is good for everybody and it's not good that that young people are becoming uh more and more unemployed. And then you need less red tape. easy to say. I don't want to be another politician that says, "Oh, we're going to cut red tape." I mean, they all do that. They've all done that throughout the whole of my life. But we've got to set out and we will set out plans to actually do that. So, we have said, for example, no business will mandatorily have to report all of its environmental footprints. Now, many will many many will want to do that just as many businesses put a lot of information in the public domain about themselves and their supply chain. But you won't have to as every single business go and do this clunky exercise you know a lot of which is not o overly scientific as well. Um so that's one small example but by the time we get to the next election there will be a compendium of ways in which we will lighten the burden of red tape and green tape on business. So those those are the four things. The the fifth if I had a fifth choice is we do need to get we need to fall back in love with wealth creators. You know, we need to make the connection. I mean, I think too many people think government is always the answer. Well, actually the answer to most things, food on our table, extending human lifespan, becoming more prosperous. Government has a role. I'm not like an anarcho libertarian, but but actually enterprise is doing the heavy lifting on most of these things. Uh and so we've got to fall in love with wealth creators. you know, the the narrative on that is now, I think, opening up very widely between this government that just wants to find more and more exotic ways of taxing and talking wealth creators down and a renewed Conservative party that is much more willing in a way that wasn't actually infraing government, much more willing to properly espouse why this is a good thing, why it's a morally good thing, and why we all depend on it. I think with and especially with younger people with with the kind of wealth creation piece, it's >> that I think there has been a real struggle with social mobility and people actually be able to create wealth and part partially tied to the housing market as well. Um, and and and all the wealth that's tied up in that. Um, and and I I actually think that's where a kind of hatred of of you know, you see all the billionaires. the billionaires is a big thing that everyone hates and um I think that's very much tied into uh >> like why they hate it because it's very hard to create that wealth yourself even like a personal amount it you know it's never going to be massive people see it as a you know not as a scale as a either you're a billionaire or you're poor and and yeah >> yeah but the opportunity to become that yourself is I think there's a very different culture from UK as well right you got to be US and there's a desire to drive it >> and I think >> one question I'd have I'd have for you on which is that's because of what Becca says is that you know as as long as it is a credible aspiration that you know okay I don't mind how well he or she is doing because that could be me if there is a sense that it could never be me because you know there isn't social mobility because you know wealth is trapped and unproductive because people can't >> get into the graduate roles >> yeah get even an employment level um then then you do get that resentment yeah but I also think it doesn't help if If politicians aren't willing to make the case, right? Every everything about culture is requires leadership and if people won't speak up for, you know, why it is okay, right? No one ever seems to have a problem with how much footballers are paid, right? But actually someone who's running a big successful enterprise perhaps, you know, creating new life saving or, you know, fat reducing medicines or something, you know, pe no one's particularly willing to go into bat and defend that. I guess you could inverse it as well and almost talk about um how you know like the philosophy of tax like I actually wouldn't mind paying >> probably I'd like to pay a little >> if I you know if the streets were clean and I could get a doctor's appointment the next day and you there was the economy was doing well and I don't drive but all the potholes were filled in. I'm sure know that's a big big thing. But um >> the fix the potholes party would romp home in every in every election I've ever stood in and and deserve and deservedly so because you know we are we are you know the state is spending 45 p in every pound. So it's non-trivial. It's not something you can just sort of put to one side. >> It's also the element of like that's often how how things grow, right? Because the discussion of prioritization is often pushed away. So people will say we'll charge a little bit more count stacks but we'll fix those issues. Whether or not they do is like a separate question but that's often in the sale rather than thinking which is kind of what you're pitching here which is look we got enough money in the system we actually need to pay for stuff back we we don't need to be spending as much as we are or we don't be doing as much as we're doing. The the issue is a lot of these things have grown because of events that happened in the world and therefore you create regulation because some terrible capacity happened. um or we increase an extra tax because we have something extra we want to spend on. And it requires one severe leadership to say no, we're not going to prioritize that. But also a severe willingness to accept the risk of standing out there and saying sorry we have terrible tragedies happen sometimes. We can't regulate against all of them. We can create incentives to try and reduce the chances of them. But this is a this is a kind of function of a world and we have to make the trade-offs of which risk for to accept or not. That's a really tough job for a politician. Do do you honestly think you and your colleagues are in the like worldview now of of doing that? Yeah, because we are look you have to be an optimist, right? You would not work in the post code I'm currently working in without an optimistic bias. Um but as much as anything I think I actually think it's been getting goal goal alignment around that you know you've had brave politicians of all different flavors. You can point to noble efforts where someone has gone and said no we're not going to U-turn you know we're not going to accept that it's the state's role to do this. Um and then their colleagues you know have have then you know said well no no we we really are having a wobble here. So there is a little bit about the fortitude and constitution of those that we elect. Um and it's difficult in a social media world but but if you've got a plan that can triumph that if you've got no plan then you are on this myasma of whatever happens to be in your social graph uh at that particular moment in time. Um and also I would just say we just don't have a choice right when you when you talk about the counterfactual is that yes you know this particular regulation may prevent some theoretical harm but but by the way know the flip side is it will have this sort of cost. It will have this burden on business. We will become this less competitive. These young people will have fewer jobs. You know then you're actually properly rehearsing. Now we don't we don't tend to do that. the the the the conversation tends to be much more about the something must be done, here's another regulation or regulator and there's no flip side on the on on what would actually cost. give you a point on um on the the reason we ended up with a football regulator is some football clubs were were going through some shaky moments in their finances but as it happened none of them actually disappeared that you know the the system of of capitalism you know another owner pops up you know the clubs are still there they've got their brand they're following you know that that is a natural process I don't think we are tolerant enough about failure but that's partly because we don't talk about risk you know we we don't talk about what the tradeoffs Oh, now we've got the chance to do that. We're going to do that. And you know, it's in democracy, people will make a choice. But, you know, if you thought that the way to get the UK to grow again was one more regulation or one more percentage point of public spending, then, you know, I'm afraid you're looking in vain, my friend, because we're already in the very high watermark territory of both of those things, right? And people are not leaving the UK because we don't have enough red tape. And they're not leaving the UK because our taxes are too low. Um, when I talked about the UK being 30th in the world on prosperity, um, and it's not just numbers and maths, but Ireland, right, the Republic of Ireland, pretty similar weather system, vaguely similar culture, language, is seventh, right? So these these are these are active choices, right? This is not something that is not aspirational for us. We we can do that. Maybe we don't get to seventh. Maybe we just get back into the top 10. These these are choices that we can make, but we've not had that conversation. and we've not surfaced. If you do this, you know, you will all have a better standard of living. >> Yeah. I hope we can beat seventh, but uh >> we're going to 30. Seven would be pretty good, right? That would be that would like I I'll get us to seven. You know, you guys can take over. You know, you're younger than me. >> I think we're almost at time. It' be great to give you one last question. What innovation of the last 50 plus years uh in the UK kind of makes you most proud? Do you think is kind of the greatest innovation we have done? >> The one that has bookended my life and has unlocked all of the wonderful world that we live in today is the invention of the silicon chip, right? The resistor, the transistor. Um, it happens. I was born in 1971. 1971 if you sort of Wikipedia is basically when the first uh semiconductors were um were commercialized. And you just think about the world we're in now. We've, you know, transformed human life. You know the fact that we're doing this I mean you know we're in like mini broadcast podcast studio here we can communicate with the world right literally anybody in the world I assume could uh could could see what we are talking about that enhances not in this case but but theoretically that enhances human understanding and and and peace and communication. Uh we're all living longer happier lives. Um my my the flip side of that is there's so many domains that we can apply that to right we we haven't we have not seen whereas you know in our social life in our entertainment we've seen this transformation of the experience we haven't really sort of seen that in for example public health it's a little bit still Florence Nightingale isn't it um you know we'll go back I'm going to go back to Westminster on the tube right the tube is still run by you know physical people driving along pressing stop and start buttons in many parts of the world sometimes joking >> when when they when they turn up. I don't disparaging but in some it's a great opportunity and you know London which is a wonderful city but needs salvaging from our terrible mayor you know could have 24/7 fully autonomous metro systems. The Victorians bequeathed us a network of tunnels. They did the hard yards, right? That's that's the hardware. It's the software layer that hasn't really moved on and and there are just so many examples like this you know energy systems we touched on because it would be a whole uh episode in itself but there's lots of domains in which we can apply this wonderful you know life force that has changed so many things you know satellites you think about number of satellites when I was born you know we're probably talking about three satellites orbiting the earth right I mean I'm old enough to remember some of those first live broadcasts of you know cricket from down wonder maybe it was better. Maybe it was better when you could only see it in black and white. Um but but you know now there's what 11,000 satellites there going to be 40,000 satellites in 3 years time. I mean it's the the level of exciting change if you are a techno optimist is really exciting. We just got to deploy some of that here be optimistic and then get a card of people who are properly willing to lead and do these tours of duty to to get back where this country can be. >> What a great answer. Thank you very much for coming on, Andrew. Enjoyed it. >> Thank you very much, Andrew.