 Let's go to the big move of the reshuffle, which was Rachel Reeves replacing Annalise Dodds as Shadow Chancellor. Now, Rachel Reeves is the object of suspicion would be the kindest way to put it by many on the left, because of an interview she gave to the Guardian in 2013, when she had just been promoted to Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions under the leadership of Ed Miliband. Now, if you've been on Twitter in the last 24 hours, you've probably seen this screenshot shared. This was the headline that accompanied that interview. Said, Labour will be tougher than Tories on Benefits promises new welfare chief. Now, that's obviously the headline. Let's go to what she actually said. So in that interview, it's just as harsh, I have to say. Nobody should be under any illusions that they are going to be able to live a life on benefits under a Labour government. If you can work, you should be working and under our compulsory job guarantee. If you refuse that job, you forgo your benefits, and that is really important. It is not an either or question. We would be tougher than the Conservatives. If they don't take it, the offer of a job, they will forfeit their benefit, but there will also be the opportunities there under a Labour government. We have got some really great policies, particularly around the jobs guarantee in cancelling the bedroom tax that show that we are tough and will not allow people to linger on benefits, but also that we are fair where there are pernicious policies like the bedroom tax, we will repeal them. I mean, obviously, this was said in 2013, but this is the kind of rhetoric, the kind of politics I think that many of us hoped were sealed in a tomb within the Labour Party, right? This idea that you complain about people lingering on benefits. And now the person who is most associated with some of those policies is now in the top economic job. Does that worry you? Yeah. I mean, I've obviously heard, as others have, that Rachel Rees has been on a journey. Lots of people in politics have been on journeys. That's fine. You know, we're all human, we all grow, we all change, hopefully, for the better. But ultimately, you know, what I see when I see too many members of my own party in politics talk about the need to occupy the centre ground of British politics, that was then considered, you know, austerity, benefit cheats coming down hard on benefit cheats and benefits. This was considered where the middle ground of British politics was, which is, you know, I think we can frankly say bollocks no longer there now. And this is the issue about the middle ground of British politics. It doesn't exist. It's a mythical place. Boris Johnson and the Tories are now handing us our back sides, showing us that the middle ground isn't a mythical place fixed in aspic in politics. It shifts, it changes. It's wherever you want it to be and wherever you make the argument for it to be. And Boris Johnson, in power, has made the argument that creating money, creating money from the Bank of England and spending it, which was considered socialist heresy before, is now the thing that you can do to invest in green infrastructure jobs and everything else that they're doing. And ultimately, I think that what the mistake too many people are party and Rachel Ruse is one of them, which you would call the kind of Blairite centric tradition is that they have this belief that there is a centre ground. But what it actually is, it's wherever the ruling, dominant, conservative party are, it's calibrating where they are and where the mainstream media, which are often supportive of them are, and then calibrating yourself accordingly. That's not good enough. Not if you're a party of principle, not if you have values and you actually believe in something, actually believe in changing the world and making it better, unless you think that where they are is somewhere to aspire to, because otherwise you're moving halfway towards them at the very least or further. So ultimately, you know, this is the whole motion of centrism. And I and for me, it's a busted flush. So if Rachel Ruse is no longer a centrist, maybe there's hope. If she is a centrist, then her and the rest of the party who consider themselves centrist are going to be basically coordinating themselves. They're going to be basically what's the word I'm looking for orientating themselves off the Tories and wherever that is. And that means on their English nationalism, their growing authoritarianism, their anti-democracy credentials, all of that. And I just don't think that's something that's going to work. We're going to see ourselves nibble to death by Greens and Liberal Democrats and new political parties that are now setting up. So ultimately, Rachel Ruse is I think is is representative of a strand in our party, which has given up the ghost of socialism. Never has been socialist. We saw that under new labor and it's basically red team, blue team. Well, it's our turn to be in charge now. And we won't make the argument for anything that's fundamentally different. We'll simply calibrate ourselves from where you are. And once you implode, once you go tide of being in power, once the mainstream media and civil society have grown tide of you, it'll be our turn. But we won't be anything transformative about what we're doing. There won't be anything that changes the world in a fundamental way. And that's the problem with centrism. And that's why if it is dominant and back in the driving seat in our party again, we are not going to be heading towards electoral success, which I think we can see already because I'll tell you what centrism looks like with this government is standing in front of a flag with a pine. And frankly, I think we saw the result of that in Hartlepool. I want to take seriously the idea that she has been on a journey. And there are some people who've said it, who I don't, you know, dismiss out of hand at all. And first of all, when it comes to this journey, I want to go to an interview Reeves did with the new statesman earlier this year. She was asked specifically, I'm about that interview with the Guardian. And she told the new statesman, I was trying to make the point, however badly, that spending more on benefits wasn't always a sign of success. And actually, the benefits bill goes up when society fails. Maybe I didn't always say it right, but that was the point I was trying to make. She goes on, look, perhaps it wasn't the right job for me at the right time. I definitely feel like a better politician and maybe more careful about what I say now than I was then. But I was trying to get a Labour government. I was trying to address some of our weaknesses. Now, to be honest, I don't think those last two sentences will be particularly reassuring to anyone. I was trying to get a Labour government. I'll say anything to get one. But let's put that to one side for a moment. The people who have come out and said maybe we should have an open mind are a former Corbyn and McDonald's adviser and a former Corbyn adviser. Both we've had on the show. So James Mills did work for John McDonald and then Corbyn. He says controversial take for some. But on the Rachel Reeves appointment, I think it's worth keeping an open mind, given her main recent interventions have been advocating in sourcing. I think Blair Wright labels are not very accurate. It feels a more post 2011 Ed Miliband appointment, to be honest. And Andrew Fisher, who was obviously head of policy under Jeremy Corbyn, you know, he got the credit for the 2017 manifesto. He tweets, I think James Mills is right. Keep an open mind. People's views can change. Look at how Ed Miliband has gone from austerity, light controls on immigration merchant to being invited to Navarra and these ups at conference policies, not personalities. Let's see some of the former. For me, what's most interesting is the Ed Miliband comparison, because ultimately, if you are the shadow work and pension secretary, what you're saying is essentially the lines and the direction that was set by the leader. Ed Miliband was the leader. It was Ed Miliband who signed off all of that shit about people lingering on benefits. Right. And I do actually think that Ed Miliband has changed. I do think that he does seem to be one of the proponents of a more transformative radical policy within the shadow cabinet. Should we give Rachel Reeves the same benefit of the doubt, therefore? I mean, I think the last thing that we need is another flip flopping politician, someone who seems to go wherever the wind or their career takes them. So even if we were to give the benefit of the doubt, which I don't, that isn't exactly something to be excited about. And I also think the Ed Miliband question is so prescient here, actually, because the issue for Ed Miliband, because I actually don't know if Ed Miliband did go on a journey. I think he actually always kind of had that politics. Many have said that that, you know, the 2017 manifesto was actually much more representative of his own politics than the 2015 manifesto was. And even it was more representative of Ed Miliband's personal politics than it was of Jeremy Corbyn's personal politics. But he didn't have the metal. He didn't have the conviviction. He didn't have the creativity to figure out how to make that politics a reality. So that's why he could be pushed around so easily by interest groups in the party or, you know, particularly the right of the party. It's why he always seemed so insecure around the right wing media because that's where he was trying to get his validation because he didn't have another idea of how to another pathway to power, another route to power, another model of building power. So if that is the truth that, you know, Rachel Reeves is sort of another is an Ed Miliband type, it doesn't bode well because it suggests the same problem, which is OK, your personal politics might be OK, but you don't have any vision or creativity or astute analysis of how we're going to make that politics into a reality. So you just rely on triangulation. But I also think that, you know, I also don't think it's the case because if you look at the spirit of the reshuffle, it's being done in a way that doesn't allow any breathing space for any remotely, you know, labor movement or, you know, progressive part of the party. You know, that's what you do. That's what you're doing when you're trying to purge the party of anyone with any connection to the labor movement. That's what you're doing when you're sacking Angela Rainer. You know, the part, as I said before, this is part of the party being handed over to a tiny minority of the PLP who, you know, haven't actually won much on their own merits in a very long time. And so when you look at that broader context of the reshuffle and the broader spirit, the broader purpose of it, that doesn't really contribute to this idea that Rachel Reeves is like a secret lefty or has come on some kind of journey. And, you know, I think that this idea of, oh, I didn't express myself well enough. You express yourself in pretty clear terms. Like it looks like when you look at that interview, it's not. Oh, I was caught off guard and I sort of didn't know what to say. It's I went into this into this interview with the with the clear intention that the Labour Party is to the right of the Conservative Party on the economy, that the Labour Party is not the party of those who have been left behind or left out of the economy. So I don't think that that that doesn't really really wash with me. I think even if I were to give her the benefit of the doubt, it shows a repeating of the mistakes that we saw under Ed Miliband and under Gordon Brown, which didn't lead to a victory. But if it isn't the case that she is, you know, secretly very different now, then it matches everything else that we think this reshuffle represents.