Veep state: the running mates debate

[Music] The [Music] Economist hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist I'm Rosie blor and I'm Jason Palmer every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your [Music] world it wasn't all that long after Britain's vote to leave the European Union that polls flip by now lots of people particularly in the labor party reckon it was a terrible idea so now that it's in power why can't labor do anything about it and a Michelin star is the most coveted award a restaurant owner can earn and usually wins them a flood of

new customers but as our correspondent finds out that delicious success can be hard to sustain [Music] but [Music] first tonight with just over a month to go until election day the first and only meeting between the two men who hope to become Vice President of the United States for more than an hour it felt like the debate had transported us back in time to kind of a different era in American politics where candidates could deal with each other in a largely respectful manner actually indicate an interest in compromise and take substantive issues seriously rather than

spend a lot of time calling each other names last night James Bennett our Lexington columnist watched the first and only vice presidential debate when JD Vance the Republican running mate to Donald Trump vied with Tim Waltz who's CA Harris's pick as potential Democrat VP but very late in the debate all of a sudden the subject of January 6 and election denial came up and I think that jolted us all back to reality with a very abrupt reminder of who JD Vance's running mate is and what exactly the politics he represents has meant for the state

of discourse in the country James before we get to that jolt of reality late in the debate tell me what each candidate wanted to accomplish last night so let's take JD Vance first what did he need to show viewers JD Vance came into the debate as according to the poll's the most unpopular vice presidential candidate in recent American history and I think one major reason for that is that he has got one Persona very online sort of trollish persona that's apt to say provocative even nasty things about childless cat ladies and so forth and recently

his willingness even eagerness to spread unverified rumors about the behavior of Asian migrants in Springfield Ohio that have just convulsed that town we really saw none of that JD Vance in this debate instead he presented himself as a very reasonable highly eloquent skilled spokesman for Donald Trump's movement the years of Donald Trump's presidency have never sounded better than they did as described by JD Vance in this debate inflation was low take-home pay was higher and he saved the very program from a democratic Administration that was collapsing and would have collapsed absent his leadership and he

did that by bending the facts beyond recognition in in a couple cases including when he claimed that Donald Trump had saved Obama care through Earnest bipartisan efforts when ObamaCare was crushing under the weight of its own regulatory burden and health care costs Donald Trump could have destroyed the program instead he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to Affordable Care and how about Tim Waltz what message did he want to get across Tim Waltz entered the debate in a very different political position than JD Vance as in fact the most popular

right now according to the polls candidate out of the four in this field although I don't think he's terribly well known Who projects this appealing avuncular downto Earth Persona and he demonstrates a lot of optimism energy on the campaign Trail but truth is unlike JD Vance he hasn't exposed himself to really adversarial interviewing or much interviewing at all and I think that showed he seemed a lot less confident a lot less poised he got off to a really weak start I thought on the very first question it's kind of a strange question about whether he

would support a preemptive strike on Iran Governor walls if you were the final voice in The Situation Room would you support or oppose a preemptive strike by Israel on Iran you have two minutes but he looked just kind of terrified by the question and I thought stumbled around a bit and trying to answer it well thank you and thank you for those join bring home tonight uh let's keep in mind where this started October 7th Hamas terrorists uh massacred over 1400 Israelis and took prisoners uh Iran or I uh Israel's ability to be able to

defend itself is absolutely fundamental getting its uh hostages back fundamental and ending the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and he often spoke in sentence fragments pronouns without anons sentences they were a bit cryptic and didn't go anywhere whereas JD Vance just reeled off complete paragraph after paragraph although Tim Walls did get more surefooted as the debate went on on the question of abortion rights I think he succeeded in speaking powerfully about the cost to individual women of the abortion bans that have gone into place in certain States the fact of the matter is how can we

as a nation say that your life and your rights as basic as the right to control your own body is determined on geography but his relative I think lack of experience in this kind of debate also showed as he struggled to give tight coherent answers to some other policy questions and also follow up and challenge some of JD Vance's more fanciful assertions but James you mentioned ear the moment when the debate turned and Tim Waltz did manage to call JD Vance on one of his outlandish claims on Election denialism step me through that JD Vance

was really trying to draw what I think is a quite a false equivalence between Donald Trump's Behavior after that election with what he rightly described as Democratic objections to previous Republican elections none of which resulted in violence none of which resulted in a real effort and the courts to overturn the election Tim Wallace did a good job of calling jie Vance on that this was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen and it manifested itself because of Donald Trump's inability to say he is still saying he didn't lose the

election I would just ask that did he lose the 2020 election Tim I'm focused on the future did kamla Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 covid situation that is a daming that is a damning non-answer I think JD Vance's refusal to answer that question his effort to dance away from it by saying I'm focused on the future I'm not thinking about the past a very transparent Dodge was just a real reminder of how trapped the Republican party is by the politics of Donald Trump and by his lies about

that election and that's what kind of dispelled what had been this very convivial for the most part debate where we saw the two candidates even on a really contentious issue like guns in schools they were able to find some common ground and we know unfortunately that a lot of kids are going to experience this terrible epidemic of gun violence and of course our hearts go out to the families that are affected by this terrible stuff and we do have to do better and I think that governor wals and I actually probably agree that we need

to do better on this the question is just how do we actually do it and they seem very pleased to be finding that Common Ground themselves I 100% believe that Senator Vance hates it when these it's it's it it's abor and it breaks your heart I I agree with that but it's that's not far enough when we know they're things that worked I've spent time I think that that aura of conviviality benefited JD Vance more than Tim Walls and I think really helped JD Vance project the image he was trying to project and it wasn't

until the very end of the debate really that Tim Walls in a sense maybe realized he was letting Senator Vance get away with this and put a stop to it fascinating stuff so what would your assessment be what do you think this debate means for the election overall and do vice presidential debate performances have an effect on who wins the presidency the snap polling suggests that most people thought it was a draw I do think JD Vance turned in the stronger performance interestingly though it also suggested both candidates improve their favorability with voters in other

words voters emerged from the debate feeling better about both men which maybe that's a a hopeful sign that politicians might take a lesson from that and aspire to have slightly more substantive debates in the future with less name calling I think the reality is that this debate is probably not going to have a major impact on the course of this campaign though I don't think there was any great Triumph or terrible mist mistake made by either candidate that's likely to benefit either on the one hand or haunt them on the other thank you so much

James thanks [Music] Rosie it was never a good idea it was never a good idea but it was the will of the people there are a whole bunch of reasons why Britain's leave voters have gone cold on brexit you might argue that the claims of the pro brexit Camp were always bound to be disappointing I feel betrayed and really quite let down by a government that promised much and delivered nothing more concretely you might point to Britain's relative economic underperformance since leaving the market that it shared with its largest tra partner I don't think it's

as worked as well as we thought it would the much touted tighter control on immigration well that hasn't shown up in the migration figures if anything many people miss a certain kind of Migrant do stop come in you know and the nurses there we are so down now it's awful is it or you might note that in the end the divorce was chaotic it's been an unmitigated disaster absolute disaster yeah brexit was a hobby horse of and then a project by and then you might argue an albatross for the conservative party so now that they're

out of power does anything change it's fairly clear 8 years after the referendum that the share of British people who think that brexit was a good idea is steadily falling Matthew HH house is our British political correspondent but doing much about that fact is much easier said than done okay so 8 years later now it is a labor government what is the government's position on brexit the context of this government coming to power is that its supporters include a high majority of people who think brexit was a bad idea so 78% of Labour party voters

would opt to rejoin given the chance a similar slightly lower proportion would like to see a second referendum in this Parliament now that's very much not the position of the government so K St the new prime minister is engaged in a big diplomatic reset of an attempt really to normalize relations with the EU that were strange during the brexit years he hosted a big Summit of leaders from the European Union and the broader European continent at blenin Palace in Oxfordshire within a couple of weeks of coming to office he met the Irish Premier in Dublin

and earlier at his official residency in the English Countryside he's been to Paris he had a big trip to Berlin which I joined him on to announce a big big bilateral pact so he's really seeking a warming of ties between the UK and other European capitals he wants to tweak or change the UK EU deal that was the product of the brexit divorce so the centerpiece of that will be a new agreement around security cooperation he's also looking for a new agreement that would facilitate the flow of food stuffs between the UK and the European

Union which would require some sort of high degree of regulatory alignment the sort of thing that the previous government wasn't keen on at all so what to read into that the sort of fence mending Tour on the part of Mr starmer he painted some fairly bright red lines while in opposition saying that the UK will not rejoin the European Union in his lifetime nor will it rejoin the blocks single Market or Customs Union nor will it entertain a return to the freedom of movement of people and those bright red lines which were necessary in opposition

seem to persist in government as well we do want a reset with Europe a reset with the EU that does not mean reversing brexit or re-entering the single Market or the Customs Union and what is striking to me is that he's not sort to replace those red lines or add to them a new set of imperatives which would guide the relationship going forward and the fact that he hasn't done that some analysts think suggests that this actually might prove to be quite a limited repal but doesn't that create some tension you were saying that something

like 3/4 of Labor voters would vote to rejoin that nearly that fraction want another referendum here why aren't those voters putting more pressure on labor so this is one of the interesting puzzles of British politics at the moment in that on the surface the PO suggest a growing share of Britain's the not only think that brexit was a mistake but would actually rejoin the European Union given the chance they are clustered in the labor party's electoral Coalition that's a pretty fragile electoral Coalition starm w a big majority on just 30 4% of the votes he

needs to keep all of that tribe happy if he's to stay in power beyond this term and yet this movement seems to have relatively little influence on British policy makers now that's partly because the questions are inherently difficult and require the ascent of 27 other EU governments and the European institutions but it is striking that even on things that we know European governments are quite keen on such as increased Mobility for young people such as Britain rejoining the Aras student Exchange program there is relatively little acute domestic pressure for Kama to sign up to those

I think part of the fact is that amongst the proe groups in the UK there isn't a strong consensus on whether they want to go for relatively peac meal improvements such as the arasa scheme or whether they want to be more radical and go for the Big Bang option of rejoin also I detect in the movement a slight lack of the sort of ruthlessness by which Nigel fra figurehead of the Euros skeptic movement employed when he really was inflicting Chaos on the conservative party over the brexit referendum there is an open question whether at some

point you see that similar sort of ruthlessness that similar sort of focused activism amongst PR groups though there's not much sign of it at the moment I have to say and I mean perhaps that is because the government is relatively new I mean how do you see these forces changing over the course of the government for the labor party brexit was pretty traumatic they lost lots of their voters over it it was a pretty unpleasant period in which to be a labor MP and so many of them are pretty reluctant to reopen the debate and

it's a new government so they're trying their hardest to be unified and disciplined behind the Prime Minister whether that changes at some point should discipline within the labor party in Parliament erode in the coming years that's an open question the other big question is what do the liberal Democrats which were once very very Pro EU but have dialed down the as they try and win votes in more conservative areas of the country where do they go on this and also they small party but the green party has adopted an increasingly ambitious policy on the European

Union they say that they would rejoin tomorrow given the chance they are small they've only got four MPS in Parliament but they are peeling away voters which K starm very much needs to hold together he needs to hold together his Coalition on the left and the right so whether they can accept any sort of pressure at all that's an open question as well I mean hearing all that you might guess that what's going on here is that that political will widespread now among Britains to do something more about the relationship with the EU is going

to find a way whether it's in the labor party or not I think this is one of the great to be seen of this government we spent 14 years studying the interaction between the sentiments of Lee voters on the right to British politics we now have to focus our Gaze on an entirely different segment of the electorate voters who tell posters that they are pro- European the big open question is whether that latent desire for closer relations with the European Union can manifest as a form of acute political pressure at any point and how if

it does materialize how the labor government responds to that pressure and I really think at the heart of this is whether that fairly diffused dispersed movement of people who regret brexit can exhibit the sort of organizational capacity and ruthlessness which was seen on the leave side in trying to drive government policy Matthew thanks very much for joining us thank [Music] [Music] you when it comes to find dining Michelin stars are a mark of the best Amelia wood writes for The Economist the rating was originally created by French Brothers Andre and edir Michelin in the early

20th century they thought by plotting out the premier restaurants in France they could encourage motorists into their cars and help sell more of the tires they made but while restaurants all around the world Now cover Michelin stars a new study finds that they may be more of a cast than a blessing so why would that happen and surely getting a Michel and star is a way to get more people in the doors to make the business more successful well it certainly does help with raising publicity the study fan that Google search intensity Rose by about

a third for restaurants that received the award in the months after and it's particularly effective at bringing in tourists right people that are going to New York or going to another big city and thinking where should I eat for a special occasion but that turns out to be part of the problem you end up with restaurants with quite a different customer base than they started with and those new customer have high expectations which can be expensive to meet in the sense that if people are going out for those special occasions those occasions have to be

really special exactly and on seeing a Michelin star as well it's not only that you're meeting the demands of customers suddenly your chefs have higher demands they are a huge part of what makes a restaurant like that successful and they want their pay to reflect the fact that their the missioning star chef and restaurant suppliers and landlords also want to charge more for the privilege of hosting a Michelin starred restaurant and restaurants that do win a Michelin star are in a pretty precarious position because these are all the people that contributed to their success and

so if they don't cave to their expensive demands they risk losing what made them a winner in the first place it seems a a weird relation is it limited to restaurants this Dynamic where having success means well risking future failure no it's not limited to restaurants in fact several Studies have shown that companies run by award-winning bosses tend to perform worse than they did both before the award and compared to their Rivals that didn't win Awards and just like chefs award-winning bosses would like to spend their time doing different things as well like writing books

joining Boards of companies interesting things for the bosses but not things that necessarily contribute to the success of a company and it also turns out that prizewinning books are reviewed more harshly by readers after winning an award and worse than Runners up in prize categories as well so it's not just bosses that have to contend with the Perils of winning an award but also consumers in other Industries find that they see things differently through the lens of a star so as regards the restaurant industry then does that mean restaurant owners maybe even chefs might kind

of hope to not get a Michelin star if they know that this is the relationship that's going on I doubt it I think when something is the Pinnacle of Glory in your industry you're always going to want to try and achieve it but I suppose that's the Divide are you in it for the glory or are you in it to stay in business Amelia thanks very much for your time no problem thanks for having [Music] me that's it for this episode of the intelligence do let us know what you think of the show you can

get in touch at podcast economist.com and don't forget that subscribers can listen to the intelligence and all our other shows on The Economist app we'll see you back here tomorrow [Music]