UK voters oust Conservatives after 14-year rule, hand Labour landslide win | The Excerpt
On Friday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY World Affairs Correspondent Kim Hjelmgaard looks at the future of British politics as the Labour Party moves into power. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he will send a delegation to resume stalled negotiations on a hostage release deal with Hamas. Former President Donald Trump's campaign and some allies are going on the offensive on Vice President Kamala Harris, as talk continues that she might replace President Joe Biden as the party's 2024 presidential nominee. USA TODAY Personal Finance Reporter Daniel de Visé talks about research into what would happen if all American workers were auto-enrolled in retirement savings. New records were set amid hot dog eating drama on the Fourth of July.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Friday, July 5th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today, Britain has a new party in charge, plus potential new developments toward a deal in Gaza. And we ask, what if every worker in America were auto-enrolled in retirement savings?
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Britain's center-left Labour Party has comfortably won a historic general election, according to partial results today, ousting the Conservative Party by a huge margin. Labour's leader, Keir Starmer, will take over as prime minister from Rishi Sunak.
Keir Starmer:
You campaigned for it, you fought for it, you voted for it, and now it has arrived. Change begins now.
Taylor Wilson:
So what's that now mean going forward and how might it affect Britain's relationship with the US? For more, I spoke with USA TODAY world affairs correspondent, Kim Hjelmgaard. Kim, good to see you.
Kim Hjelmgaard:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
What happened here in the UK's election this week? What did British voters decide?
Kim Hjelmgaard:
Well, they decided that, after 14 years of Conservative Party rule, they just had enough of it. The Conservative Party was more or less obliterated in a historic defeat. The Labour Party won a landslide, essentially. It's been 14 years of kind of crazy in the UK. It started off essentially when Britain voted to leave the European Union, what we call Brexit, and the UK never recovered. Starmer is the sixth prime minister now in eight years. That's a high turnover rate for this country.
Taylor Wilson:
Britain's Conservatives have really dominated for a generation, winning 8 of the last 11 votes before this. Why were they voted out now?
Kim Hjelmgaard:
When Britain left the European Union, it kind of kicked off a political crisis where successive prime ministers couldn't really convince Parliament whether this was a good idea, how it should happen. It was compounded a number of years later by COVID-19 crisis and Boris Johnson's premiership when he drew up lockdown rules, which then he ignored as he went to parties and various social gatherings. Because of internal factors, but also external ones like the war in Ukraine and COVID, the cost of living in the UK became very high. The economy just fell off a cliff. The Conservative government didn't really have a plan and still doesn't have a plan. They've opted to go with the Labour party, which is a center-left party that has not been in power for years now.
Taylor Wilson:
What else can you tell us, Kim, about this new Labour Party government and really some of the expectations or potential challenges they face?
Kim Hjelmgaard:
They face a lot of challenges. There's probably two key ones. I think the first expectation from voters here is that the Labour government will just do more normal policy-making. However, their biggest challenge really is how they're going to help the economy here, how they're going overcome a cost of living crisis when they don't really have any money. They've promised not to raise taxes, and that's one of the things that made them more electable. The Labour Party is historically a left-wing party, and over the last number of years, under Keir Starmer, he has brought them to the center. So they've ruled out all these tax rises at least straight away. They've also said they're going to put police officers on the streets, hiring more teachers, fixing some of this decaying infrastructure. They haven't really explained where the money to do that's going to come from. So I guess the danger for them is that people's expectations are somewhat high around those types of measures.
Taylor Wilson:
You mentioned Brexit earlier, Kim. It's really impossible to talk about British politics without bringing Brexit into it. I'm curious what this now means for Britain's relationship with the EU going forward.
Kim Hjelmgaard:
I think, on the face of it, not a lot is going to change. The Brexit vote was so psychologically damaging to everyone here in the UK. They spent a long time bickering, not just the politicians, but families were split over it. Playgrounds were split over it. There's very little likelihood, at least in the short term, that this new Labour government is going to somehow undo all that and hold another referendum and see whether rejoining the EU is something that people will be prepared to vote on. Brexit is not being overturned, not straight away.
Taylor Wilson:
Of course, Britain is the US's closest ally. What does this change in leadership now mean for the US and its relationship with the UK?
Kim Hjelmgaard:
The US and the UK are perhaps the two closest allies that you could point to anywhere in the world really. That relationship extends to defense, it extends to intelligence sharing. In the UK, typically, that relationship is viewed as entirely nonpartisan. So whoever might be the government of the day, the relationship with the United States does not change in that fundamental way. Now, of course, the big variable here is that there is a US election coming up. I think that from the British perspective, Donald Trump is a little bit more chaotic, and it's unclear what he would do. Perhaps Joe Biden and the Democratic Party is a little bit more of a known quantity in that sense. But nothing fundamental changes. The US special relationship remains special.
Taylor Wilson:
Kim Hjelmgaard covers world affairs for USA TODAY, joining me from London. Thank you, Kim.
Kim Hjelmgaard:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told President Joe Biden yesterday that he has decided to send a delegation to resume stalled negotiations on a hostage release deal with Hamas. A source in the Israeli negotiating team speaking on condition of anonymity said there was a chance of achieving agreement after Hamas made a revised proposal on the terms of a deal. The Israeli response to the Hamas proposal submitted via mediators was different from past instances during the nearly nine-month war in Gaza, where Israel has said the conditions put forward by Hamas were not acceptable. The White House said Biden and Netanyahu on a phone call discussed the response received from Hamas on possible terms of a deal. Hamas has said any deal must end the war and bring a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Israel has maintained it will accept only temporary pauses in the fighting until Hamas is eradicated and once the release of Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza.
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Former President Donald Trump's campaign and some of his allies have gone on the offensive on Vice President Kamala Harris amid talk among some of her fellow Democrats that she might replace President Joe Biden as the party's 2024 presidential nominee. On social media and in several statements over the past 48 hours, Trump's campaign and his Republican allies appear to be laying the groundwork for an assault on Harris if Biden does decide to end his reelection bid following his disastrous debate performance last week. The National Republican Congressional Committee, which oversees House Republican races, called her Biden's enabler-in-chief, and MAGA Inc., a fundraising super PAC supporting Trump, released a statement calling her the Invasion Czar. In 2021, Biden said Harris would lead efforts with Mexico and Central American nations to address illegal immigration. Still, Biden has insisted he's not bowing out four months before this November's election, and Harris has stood firmly behind him.
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What if every worker in America were auto-enrolled in retirement savings? In an ongoing study, researchers from Princeton University and the Treasury Department have looked into it. I spoke with USA TODAY personal finance reporter, Daniel de Visé, to learn more. Daniel, thanks for making the time as always.
Daniel de Visé:
And thank you.
Taylor Wilson:
Daniel, what did this research center on and uncover as it pertains to a hypothetical auto-enrolled retirement savings plan?
Daniel de Visé:
These were researchers from Princeton and the Department of the Treasury. They wanted to explore the low rate of retirement savings for lower-income people. Higher-income people, wealthy people, almost all of them save for retirement through a 401(k) or IRA, almost 100%. At the low end of income, very few people do. So as kind of a thought experiment, these Princeton scholars mapped out what would happen if everybody across the country was automatically enrolled in an individual retirement account at their job, basically, assuming they're at a job with a W-2 form where you could do this. How would that change the rate of savings for low-income people? They're not looking at higher-income people because they already save.
Taylor Wilson:
You mentioned low-income folks. What would this really functionally, practically mean for low-income Americans and retirement in particular, and how might help take a strain off social services?
Daniel de Visé:
Right now, about one fifth of lower-income folks save for retirement, 20%. I can't replicate Princeton University's math, but they figured out if everybody were automatically enrolled in IRAs, everyone at your job basically and you had to opt out of it if you wanted to, that about 40% would end up saving, which is twice as many people. Now, why isn't it 100%? Well, a lot of people would opt out. If you were automatically put in an IRA or whatever, 401(k), a lot of lower-income people would say, "I can't afford that. I've got much more urgent needs," so people would opt out of it. There's a lot of people who aren't in regular jobs. They're in gig work or working on farms. Some of them, you can't do it. Why does this matter is that there is not enough retirement saving, especially among lower-income people. If you retire without savings, it's just that much more likely you will put a strain on social services in your state basically, and that costs the state money.
Taylor Wilson:
Daniel, would a national retirement plan like this raise savings rates?
Daniel de Visé:
Well, absolutely. Again, the upper-income folks, if you're in the upper 40% of income, well over the average income, you are saving for retirement almost certainly. But very, very few people save in the lower echelons of income. That's a huge problem. That's the reason why a lot of people say that these tax advantaged programs for saving for retirement aren't working because there's such low participation for lower-income folks that the overall rate of saving is just not very high. There are several states that have programs like this already. If it were nationalized, if everyone were automatically enrolled, yes, the rate of savings would go significantly up for everyone.
Taylor Wilson:
We're talking through some hypotheticals here, Daniel, but how realistic really is a national auto-enrolled retirement program like this?
Daniel de Visé:
Well, not very. The states that have approved it are mostly, I'm going to say, blue states, more liberal states. In these states, if you're a small business and you don't offer a 401(k), you have to do this. You have to allow all of your workers to sign up for this thing. And it's automatic, so you have to go in and un-enroll if you don't want to do it. Now, I think for some more conservative lawmakers, and this is their argument is, do we want to heap on more regulations onto small business? Is this kind of onerous? They might argue, "Let the states do it if states want to do it," and several states have done it. So that's the counter argument. So, no, it's not seen as very likely that there's going to be a national retirement automatic program anytime very soon, but economists think it's a very good idea.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, Daniel de Visé covers personal finance for USA TODAY. Thanks, Daniel.
Daniel de Visé:
Thank you, sir.
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Taylor Wilson:
Joey Chestnut ate 57 hot dogs and buns yesterday in a five-minute exhibition at Fort Bliss Army Base in El Paso, Texas. That fell one shy of the winning total from the men's 10-minute Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island where Chestnut was banned this year. Pat Bertoletti ate 50 hot dogs to win the contest without Chestnut's involvement, while Miki Sudo set a new record on the women's side, eating 51 hot dogs. Perennial hot dog-eating champ, Joey Chestnut, was barred from competing this year because he signed an endorsement deal with Impossible Foods. The company launched a plant-based hot dog, and Nathan's views Chestnut's partnership with Impossible as a conflict of interest.
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Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. We're produced by Shannon Rae Green, and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: UK voters oust Conservatives after 14-year rule | The Excerpt
