this is bbc news. i'm david eades. the headlines: brazil's presidential election will be settled in a second—round run—off vote on the 30th of october. neither the left wing challenger, luiz inacio lula da silva, nor the right—wing incumbent, jair bolsonaro, were able to gain the 51% of the vote required secure a first—round victory. indonesian authorities are investigating the death of 125 football fans killed in a stadium. thousands of fans panicked and rushed for an exit after police fired tear gas at them when they invaded the pitch.

memorials have been held across indonesia for the deceased. the british prime minister has admitted her government's mini budget that sparked turmoil on the financial markets could have been handled better. liz truss has remained defiant as senior conservatives criticised the fiscal event. now on bbc news, political thinking with nick robinson. welcome to political thinking, a conversation with rather than an interrogation of someone who shapes our thinking about what has shaped theirs. well, you know what they say about a week in politics. what a long time this week has felt since that budget that was officially not a budget. we've seen the pound go down. interest rates go up, mortgages being cancelled, and billions and billions and billions of pounds being spent by the bank of england in order to try

and defend the pension system. my guest on political thinking this week is a new member of liz truss�*s new cabinet. he's the education secretary, kit malthouse. four years before then he did morejunior roles, having been deputy to boris johnson, not as prime minister, but when he was mayor of london. kit malthouse is seen as a fixer. he becomes the fifth education secretary in a little over a year, a sign ofjust how unstable politics has been. kit malthouse, welcome to political thinking. thank you. i'm flattered to be here. well, it's been a roller coaster ride this week, hasn't it? it has been a challenging week, as they say. i think that's the euphemism that politicians use. but hopefully things will settle, although i have to say it comes. i mean, i got elected in 2015

and it's been a pretty much a roller—coaster ride since 2016. so leadership elections, general elections, referendums, pandemics, wars, it's been a, you know, a bit of a roller coaster. so i sort of feel a bit seasoned towards it. and to be honest with you, nick, ifind myself a bit surprised that people are surprised because obviously the prime minister advertised during the leadership election that change was coming and that she felt a strong need to respond frankly to a lot of the calls from across the spectrum about issues of productivity growth, you know, the nature of our economy. and so her stepping into that, particularly with an energy crisis, seems to have taken a lot of people by surprise. and i'm a bit perplexed by that. what you're surprised that they didn't understand the scale of change that liz truss was always going to bring about? yeah, and as far as i can see, she's moved extremely swiftly to fulfil some of the pledges that she made during their leadership election campaign. maybe it wasn't picked up

enough, but certainly she said she was going to move within seven days and that's what she did. so while obviously the the market reaction is something that we have to pay attention to and understand and address, and i know that the treasury and bank of england are working closely together. yeah, i remain surprised that people are surprised. has it been too quick? in other words, has there been not enough explanation to the markets? well, i think there was a, to be fair, i think there was a sense of a need of urgency to address, you know, the very real anxiety in the british people about the cost of living crisis, particularly with energy. and she had said she would move quickly to deal with that, which is what she did. obviously, i think kwasi announced now is going to do another wider statement at the end of november, which will talk about the wider fiscal environment. but you had to hesitate, though, because nobody knows what to call these bloomin things any more. we used to call them.

it was really simple budgets. well, look, when i was a backbencher on the treasury select committee, i we used to complain about the fact that we had too many fiscal events. but, you know, times change. and when you're in a situation of volatility like that, it's critical. but, you know, chris philp, chief secretary, was out saying, you know, fiscal rectitude and discipline still remains at the heart of what we want to do. it's a very important message for the market and the world to understand. but if you look at some of the stuff that was was announced last friday, particularly the, i mean, the technical word is supply side, but actually it's measures to make it easier for people to go to work. easier to make wealth. easier to save money and to spend money. you know, all those kind of things are, are coming down the track over the next few weeks. and i'm hopeful that all of that will hang together as a package, that people can see what the plan is. and the prime minister is somebody who very definitely has a plan. i guess what people might say is, well, she should have speued out that plan in the budget. we're not allowed to call a budget. so that that awful phrase, no, it's not yours. fiscal rectitude.

in other words, what we used to call sound money, making the numbers add up was clear to the markets there and then. well, you would like to think, wouldn't you, the conservative party in charge and i speak as a chartered accountant, that would be a given. and maybe that's one of the reasons why we're surprised that people are surprised. it is a given that, you know, ourjob is to make the books balance. and, you know, i'm sure that's what the treasury team will, will lay out in the weeks to come. you know, it's important now at this period of volatility that the bank and the treasury stick close together. and they seem to be doing that. which is great. i'm sure, you know, it's not my department, but i'm sure treasury will be explaining in the days and weeks to come what the plan is. and this is something you clashed with the previous chancellor in cabinet. now, normally we don't get to know, but we did learn. kit malthouse, we read took rishi sunak on in the cabinet said where's the growth plan? where is the plan for looking again at spending? well, i mean, i obviously can't comment on cabinet. you'll have to see the minutes when they emerge in now 20 yea rs. we've shortened it from 30. so you don't have long to wait. you can tell us if the report

is rubbish, which i know you're not doing. if you look back at my record, i've always been a kind of low tax tory. i do believe that strongly that giving people autonomy in their life also means autonomy over their finances to make choices for themselves and for their families. and you know that in a way, if i'm also a capitalist, i want people to participate in capitalism. and that means we need to leave them with money so that they can invest in and build asset bases for themselves. so it shouldn't come as a surprise that i'm very much aligned on the policy that the prime minister is promoting. so that means, yes, tax cuts and it also means something you argued for, i assume, before liz truss became prime minister, which is looking again at spending, reconsidering spending. well, i've spent my entire political career and it's now quite long, very, very focused on the spending side of the revenue account because, you know, we a we have a moral obligation to make sure that we're not wasting any money. and i know politicians always say that, but in truth, we do.

and we have to constantly question what we're doing and kind of trim the sails of the boat to make sure that we're as efficient as possible. but also, we need to do our best to leave as much money in the pockets of the people we serve as we possibly can, because they are fundamentally the people who create wealth and create growth and provide intergenerational progress through building a sort of intergenerational balance sheet, if you like, and if the public sector comes to dominate the economy too much, i do believe that it crowds out private sector activity. now, if we've had a problem with growth in this country over the last few years, which we have, it's been pretty anaemic. a focus on private sector enterprise and growth is critical, and setting people free to build businesses is a key part of that. and let's turn to your story now. people listening to kit malthouse, particularly if you come from the north west like me, he would say he's a scouser, isn't he?

now there are lots of liverpudlian senior tories. now there wouldn't have been five, ten, 15, 20 years ago, partly because of the rage. and i think that is a fair description, the rage that was felt in that city towards margaret thatcher for many years. there's you, there's theresa coffey, there's nadine dorries, jake berry. gillian keegan. esther mcvey. esther mcvey, many of whom done this podcast. was it because of your upbringing in liverpool in an incredibly politically charged time that you became a conservative? yeah. steve mcpartland, there's lots of us now. i think somebody said to me the other day, there are more scouse born tories now than there are labour. and i definitely think that the atmosphere in the city during the 1970s and eighties kind of radicalised the generation of young people to become conservatives. you know, we all watched as the hard left under derek hatton essentially

destroyed the city. and we got into the, what did neil kinnock call it in that famous speech? that grotesque chaos is what he described liverpool as at the time. what is sad is i think i can remember the speech, the grotesque chaos, he said, of people scuttling around in taxis with redundancy notices to their own workers. we're showing our age in my political nerdiness. but for people who don't remember, this was derek hatton was running militant with a capital m that's the name of an organisation, not a description faction that was running liverpool council. but it made you think what at that time? well, it made me think that there must be a better way. there must be a better way. and it coincided with a, you know, a conservative government nationally, who, as far as i could see and i know there are lots of people who felt that what that government did was a negative for the city. but as far as i could see,

they were kicking in doors for people like me, little boys from south liverpool, basically saying, you can be whatever you want. did you need doors kick in? you come from aigburth. that's quite posh. well, big houses, your parents, your dad was... well, both parents i think were chartered accountants. my mum's a lawyer. 0h, forgive me. it's an interesting question. i mean, school, look, i my so i was born to a pair of penniless students. both my parents first in their family to go to university. both came from modest backgrounds in yorkshire. i'm actually genetically yorkshireman and you know, they built a life in liverpool which was, you know, prosperous and my dad started a business and built it up. my mum worked very hard to become a lawyer. they are prime examples of the value of kind of good education and hard work and they built a life for me and my sisters, which was a good one. but you're right, i guess. i mean, my parents were fortunate and worked hard to build what they had and we benefited from that.

but, you know... was it another thing — forgive me interrupting — which i certainly picked up when i talked to nadine doris on this programme, a deep, deep resentment at the assumption that because of which city you came from, you should have a certain sort of politics. yeah, there's definitely a bit of that. if you were, if you were a rebellious teenager in liverpool, you were a conservative. that's for sure. and you were? it was well, certainly you felt like you wanted if you wanted to be different. how posh was this school that you were at? well, the liverpool college at the time was, i would call it an eccentric school. a hangover of liverpool's past. a lot of sport, quite a lot of religion. and we were taught by a fantastic cadre of mainly men who were all in their kind of fifties, some of who obviously, given the time, had kind of as young men had fought in the war. and it was a kind of dusty, incredibly enjoyable backwater, i have to say. i mean, it was fun at school.

we had fun. did you have much to do with kids at the other schools at comprehensives? we didn't have a huge amount, no. if the truth be told, no. i mean, i obviously i was at primary school nearby until i was 11 and then went to school there. but it was, it was a strange atmosphere, really. i mean, you know, the college at that time benefited enormously from the assisted place scheme. so we had a lot of boys who came in from different backgrounds. it's quite a mixed school demographically. i think there are three of us in the house now who are from the school, me, jake berry and steve mcpartland. right. all conservatives. yeah, all conservatives. right. so you've got a kind of mixture there. i asked you about mixing with people from comprehensives, because i think you're going to remember this letter, you wrote a rather rude letter about people who went to comprehensive schools. when you're a student at university. you had to go at a fellow student, iguess, darren murphy, who went on, by the way, to be an adviser to a labour cabinet minister. and you said his ill phrased

ponderous letter was obviously written by someone with a less than adequate education. open brackets, probably comprehensive, close brackets. yeah. no, this letter, i'm, you know, talk about offence archaeology 3a years ago, it basically at the time, it was sort of a satirical letter designed to kind of wind up the uni labour club. right. you know, newcastle university, where i went was a kind of hotbed of activism and we spent a lot of time winding each other up, you know, essentially. so it's a sort of that it has to be seen in that tone as a sort of idiotic letter written to poke fun at the labour club. and, you know, we're not dissimilar generations. you remember what it was like in the late eighties at the time. i'm sure they wrote just as rude letters about us. yes. sadly, we haven't got those. but you did then compare conservatives, a party of highly educated, intelligent, intelligent professionals with experience in the real world, with people who went to a whole bunch

of social misfits, i think at the labour party. well, i mean it was quite robust that. it was a very robust time. we, student politics then was quite red in tooth and claw and there was a lot of winding each other up. but you didn't go straight into politics. i mean, you had a long career in local politics before you became a member of parliament. you were a businessman. you also counted, successful business, i think it's fair to say. well, it's still going so, which is quite something. i'm afraid of the cuttings all that came up were your failures. oh, is that right? oh yeah. so as an entrepreneur, you have to live with things that don't work and you're right to. so i trained as a chartered accountant and i wasn't a brilliant accountant. as i think everybody there would admit. and so i resigned the day i qualified and decided that i had to do my own thing. and so i did go into business and over the years have tried

to start various businesses, hop was a essentially a domestic low cost airline. i got very frustrated with the fact that our travel system, our network was very radial from london effectively. so if you wanted to go from norwich to liverpool, you had to go via london. and that seemed crazy to me. so it was in the days of the early days of low—costs, so the idea was, we'd have a low—cost aircraft carrying, you know, 90—odd passengers that would flip between these towns, hop between the towns of liverpool, norwich, liverpool, edinburgh, glasgow. you couldn't get direct trains. it didn't really work. and in the end, you know, i mean, the business didn't take off, forgive the pun. there wasn't a single flight. no. well, i recruited a good management team from a from another airline that had been taken over. and we kind of ran it. we tried to raise money and get it going, but. but i'm afraid it didn't fly. has that actually been an advantage? in the united states people would boast about failed businesses, even bankruptcies. there's a sort of sense that you only succeed by failing

and that most people advertise it, here it's regarded somehow slightly embarrassing, as you deal in a house of commons, which seems to me quite short of people who've set up and run their own businesses. a lot of lawyers, a lot ofjournalists, a lot of people who've been in education and all the rest of it, lots of people have been permanent politicians. you're probably quite a rarity. i think i am. i think there are a few of us who've been involved in business, but not as many as as you might like. and certainly, you know, i'm not shy about my business failures. absolutely not, because i think you're totally right. i learnt a huge amount from them. and, you know, if you've got to keep trying and then you eventually succeed. i mean, one of the things about if you look at entrepreneurs, the most successful ones are the ones who have had, you know, misfires in their records and eventually get it right. and so i think that's absolutely right. and changing that culture to allow people to try and take risk, recognising that you are taking a risk when you start businesses is critical. and also, to be honest with you, a reflection in the house of commons

about business or a sense of the house of commons about business is actually bloody hard. it is really hard work to start a business. it's stressful, it's difficult, it takes time, sweat, money, you know, your whole family very often put on the line, you know, and particularly when you're running your own business and can't rely on the paycheque coming in every month. that is a psychology that we have to grasp if we're going to help more people do more of that to build those businesses, that will bring the growth we need. and my sense is that that's fed into the way you've operated as a politician. you were at westminster council for a long time. i think you became deputy leader at one point. for five years i was deputy leader. that council, people of a certain age will remember, has always had a reputation for bearing down on spending, for promoting value for money, not without controversy over the years. but did that experience in council shape your view of national politics now, which is to be more demanding about what you get for your money? you're absolutely right.

it was a great lesson in what can be achieved and the trick we set ourselves under the late, great simon milton as leader was to do, to pull off the impossible, which was to have the lowest council tax in the country and be top of the local government league tables, the blairite local government league tables. and we managed to do it for performance. performance, right. and notjust performance on the stuff that's easy, but the hard stuff like, like social care and social services, right? so westminster city council was top of the league table for things like children's services, really important risk managing stuff. and that taught me an enormous lesson about financial rectitude and the ability to squeeze the maximum amount of value out of every pound. now, if i were the chief secretary to the treasury and i was listening to that, i think, tremendous, kit malthouse is exactly where i need him to be. he just said how important

it is to cut taxes. he wants to cut spending too. he wants to get efficiencies. have you given up the idea that education secretary's job is to get a bigger education budget? well, no, because the one thing we do know about education is that resources and capacity matter. it's not the be all and end all. you know, in the end, it's the teacher that stands in front of the class that is the most important influence on outcomes. but when you're looking at a pattern of spending across the whole of a, of an organisation, whether it's a council or a, you know, city hall or whether it's a government, you have to do it within a framework of priorities. we have to have a conversation with treasury colleagues about what we and what the prime minister want to achieve and then how we pay for it. now, i can't do, i'm not going to do my budget negotiations here on in. but, you know, a key part of our growth strategy is to to make sure that the young people that we're turning out have the skills and abilities and the future that they want everywhere across the whole of the united kingdom. everywhere is an interesting

word, isn't it? because liz truss has talked about doing more to promote grammar schools, which teach a tiny, tiny fraction of people in this country. even conservative governments have not allowed new grammar schools to be created. they've had to go through hoops to say, we're creating an annex and we're creating a branch. but you can't create new grammar schools. does kit malthouse, education secretary, want new grammar schools? well, the prime minister has made this pledge during the leadership election and she's very keen to see it through. and so we'll be doing a lot of work in this area to understand what it is parents want, because whatever the arguments are, there's a strong desire in some parts of the country for parents to have that choice that that's where they want to send their children. catherine burbage was appointed by this government to be the social mobility tsar, says the problem with grammar schools now, she says, is there's an industry around preparing children to get into them. so if you don't have the cash or the wherewithal to prepare your child to get in, then you get left out.

and there are plenty of conservatives who say, look, this is a sort of misty—eyed nostalgia for a system that doesn't exist any more. well, that's why, as i say, i think we have to have a conversation about what people actually want, what they're looking for when they say, i want a grammar school. is that about actually a school called a grammar, is it about a political ethos, a certain type of education. it sounds like you think the values of grammar schools you might be promoting, not necessarily new, new ones. generally, i don't ask people about their family, but i think it's legitimate. in this one case, your own children, do they go to ordinary state schools or private schools? so i generally don't talk about my family and they're not part of my political life. they don't appear in photos. i'm not part of that kind of thing. but my kids, all my kids have been to a mixture of both. and, you know, we make personal choices ourselves. at the beginning of this interview, i mentioned that you're the fifth education secretary in just over i think it's a week or two over a year. and i'm going to confess, when my producer told me this, i said, are you sure?

and we just kept checking it back. and it is true. now, you said politics has been very lively. i think you said a roller coaster since you became an mp in 2015. well, that's a really good question. i mean, look, it's obviously less than optimal. it's absolutely true. and in one of my previous jobs, i was housing minister for a year, and i think i was something like the 17th minister in 18 years. and so, you know that, it is a problem. having said that, we have just had come through a period on longevity. so i was policing minister for three and a half years, which enabled me to embed and progress policies as well. look, we have these moments in our history where things become volatile. at root of today's instability is because the former prime minister was forced out by conservative ministers and conservative mps. borisjohnson of course. you were his deputy for years as mayor of london. could you see then both

the qualities, yes, but also the problems that were dogging him when he moved into downing street. no, i don't think so, nick, to be honest with you, i mean, i learnt at city hall that you know, that borisjohnson was a kind of very potent political force. extraordinary personality that the british people found attractive. and ifelt when he became prime minister that we would see that success that he'd had at city hall for eight years. you know, in a city which demographically people said we could never win. and then he won twice. and then similarly in a referendum, which they said we would never win. and he was instrumental in that victory, too. so i had assumed that it would continue. but a combination of events meant that wasn't to be. i've spoken to people who say

that you were a kind of gordon brown to his tony blair in city hall, doing all the work, getting not much of the glory and thinking i could do thisjob better than he could. well, you know, i forget who it was. there was an american politician who said there's no end to what you can achieve in politics if you're not interested in who gets the credit. and to be honest with you, i've always been a very kind of mission—focused person. i've never really been that interested in the celebrity side of politics. to me, it's about the mission. a final thought for you, then. given how keen you are on this project or mission as you describe it, do you share the worries that some have? that there are critics who are, to use the words of a telegraph columnist alastair heath, trying to turn this into an erm mark tow. into an erm mark two? that was the moment in whichjohn major's government was effectively destroyed politically in 1992 when the pound plummeted and interest rates went up. is that a fear you have politically? well, i don't share that fear.

i'll have to read his column. i mean, one of the things i have to say over the, since i got involved in politics, that has become a big influence, i think, is social media. and it's increased the velocity of decision—making. it's increased the kind of sense of outrage out there. and i do worry that we get ourselves into a kind of psychological doom loop. i know from my point of view as, you know, a long time ago economics graduate, a business person, an accountant, all the rest of it, you know, 80% of of economics is psychology. and if these, you know, it is possible to talk yourself into a problem. and i think we need now to talk positively, and for people to understand the plan. but there is a kind of professional troll out there, who's trying to steer things in a particular way. and we just need to calmly counteract, that point out what the plan is, recognise the worries and concerns of the british people, as we have done on energy and then i think we'll

steer a steady course. kit malthouse, thanks forjoining me on political thinking. that explanation of the arguments for liz truss and kwasi kwarteng's economic approach. was i have to say clearer than any that i've heard the argument that awful jargon supply side was just about make it easier to create businesses and to do business and to create wealth. but his interview revealed something else, that this cabinet took for granted that the conservatives would be trusted to make the books add up. and what we've learnt this week is they couldn't take it for granted at all. thanks for watching. hello. the weather's fairly quiet out there right now. higher pressure is building across england and wales, and

with clear spells and the light winds, it is going to be quite chilly first thing in the morning on monday. these are the city temperatures, but in rural spots it may only be a couple of degrees above freezing. milder here in the western isles with more of a breeze coming off the atlantic, which will also push in a weather front which will also push in a weatherfront during which will also push in a weather front during the course of monday. so we are expecting some rain here in the north—west, whereas england and wales dry and really quite warm, temperatures up to 19 in london and cardiff, up to around 17 in liverpool and the lowlands of scotland will be 15. here's a look at tuesday's weather. the weather front moves across the uk, not an awful lot on it, the best of the weather will be in the south—east. here, these south, south—westerly winds will draw in some warmth, and temperatures could reach 20 degrees in london and norwich, a bit cooler in the north west.

welcome to bbc news. i'm david eades. our top stories: no outright winner in the brazilian election: left—wing candidate luiz inacio lula da silva and right—wing president jair bolsonaro will go to a second—round run—off. iam i am live in rio. brazilians braced for a bruising run—off election of this presidential election. indonesia investigates the death of 125 football fans killed in a stampede after police used teargas in the stadium. and the skin—tight fit of the spray—on dress that's the talk of the catwalk at this year's paris fashion shows.