00:00I want to talk this morning about Andy Burnham and does he have a route to become leader of the
00:06Labour Party slash Prime Minister?
00:08So I find this one really interesting. So I think there's a like fable of what is not working in
00:14the tale, the recent tale of Andy Burnham.
00:16Shall we begin with the first point, which is he is not an MP, he's the Mayor of Greater Manchester.
00:20He is the Mayor of Greater Manchester. Apparently he wanted to stand as an MP, so he wanted to resign
00:25the mayoralty
00:26and he wanted to stand as an MP and rejoin Parliament and he wanted to stand for Gorton and Denton,
00:31which is the constituency where there was a by-election, where it was Hannah Spencer, the Green former plumber, who
00:37is now an MP.
00:39And it was Andy Burnham had wanted to stand and contest that seat, which had been held by the Labour
00:44Party.
00:45And he'd been blocked from standing by the NEC, which is the governing committee of the Labour Party.
00:51Siobhan Mahmood, the chair, had recused herself rather magnificently from that decision.
00:55But all of the briefing was that it was Keir Starmer and his team that had been very clear that
00:58Andy Burnham was not allowed to resign the mayoralty,
01:02trigger a mayoral election and that he was not allowed to get back into Parliament.
01:07Now, my view is that when you look at the outcome of that election result, which was basically the Green
01:13Party won
01:13and then the vote was split, really, Green, Reform, Labour,
01:18it might have been a much more politically smart thing to do to let Andy Burnham fight that seat.
01:22Because if Andy Burnham had fought that seat, probably, I mean, who knows, he might well have won.
01:27And then he would be part of the runners and riders now.
01:30But actually, what could have happened is that the vote would have been split between Labour and the Greens
01:35and the Reform candidate would have won.
01:37Now, you might think that's like, why would that be in the interest of the Labour Party?
01:40Well, instead of going into this recent round of local elections, having given the Greens a massive bounce
01:46of having won this election in the Labour heartland, you know, having an annoyed Andy Burnham on the sidelines,
01:52you could have had a living example that if you want to stop reform, you've got this, it doesn't work,
01:58the kind of Greens-Labour split.
02:00So it could have actually been to the Prime Minister's advantage to let Andy Burnham stand.
02:04But that would have required foresight.
02:06It would have required foresight. And I mean, I'm not a political operative.
02:10And if even I can work out that might have been better, then probably you'd hope that they could be
02:14smarter than that.
02:15The other thing that is a bit like your point about everyone's an expert on developed betting.
02:20We've all, you know, become experts on the Labour election rulebook.
02:23I mean, there's a very good House of Commons library note.
02:27She's had her highlighter pens up, people. So look out.
02:31Well, I love the House of Commons library. It's very good.
02:34But it has in it that the rules are, and everyone's talking about this, the rules are you have to
02:39be an MP
02:40in order to be a candidate for the leadership of the Labour Party.
02:44That was only written down quite recently.
02:46So in general, do you have to be a member of Parliament in order to lead the Parliamentary Labour Party
02:52and be the Prime Minister? For sure.
02:54There's nowhere that says actually these things have to happen in a perfect sequence.
02:59So it would be perfectly possible were the Labour Party to decide to do this, to have a leadership election,
03:05to allow Andy Burnham to stand and then to kind of sort it out slightly afterwards.
03:09So if he becomes a leader of the Labour Party, then have a by-election.
03:13And then, I mean, super awkward if he doesn't manage to win that seat.
03:16So he'd want to really, really deploy the big guns.
03:19But all of that is possible.
03:21I think it's just a perfect illustration of the kind of mess we've got to
03:26and the way that people get so trapped in this very, very closed thinking.
03:29These aren't laws of gravity.
03:31This is a rule book which the Labour Party has changed God knows how many times,
03:35including disastrously in 2014 to make it one vote, which has allowed all sorts of other things to discuss.
03:41They could just let Andy Burnham be part of the competition.
03:43And actually, everybody should want that.
03:45If there is going to be a contest now for leader of the Labour Party, for the love of God,
03:50it needs to be a clean one
03:51and not have like another king over the water and I didn't get my chance and I got wrapped up
03:55in some sort of process.
03:56Let's just go for it.
03:58Pick a person and then back them and then please get on with it.
04:01Helen, do you think that there is a sort of mandate problem with Andy Burnham
04:05because he has not actually been elected to become an MP?
04:09Do you think people can make a fair argument that this is not what the public voted for if he
04:13becomes Labour leader?
04:14So you can either say that Keir Starmer was the Labour leader at the point of the election
04:18and therefore he needs to be the Labour leader until the next general election.
04:21That's a perfectly kind of quite pious, but you can make that argument.
04:25Or you can say actually what matters the most to the country, the party, the, you know, insert whatever,
04:32is having the best person to do the job.
04:34And I think there will definitely be people who will recoil with horror
04:39and if Labour Party members are pearl clutches, they will be clutching their pearls, pearl wearers rather.
04:45At the notion that actually you could just say, what the hell, Andy could be on the ballot paper
04:50and then sort out the MP bit slightly sequentially or be doing it live while there's a by-election going
04:54on
04:54or whatever, whatever.
04:56But actually I don't think really process is the point
05:00and what people will really care about is, is this person any good?
05:04Are they actually effective at managing the Parliamentary Labour Party?
05:07Do they have a plan?
05:09Do they look like a good Prime Minister?
05:10Do they sound like a good Prime Minister?
05:12And the kind of technicality of actually, according to the rule book on page 34,
05:16he should have done this in this particular order and it's been an unconstitutional,
05:20but I mean, who cares?
05:21All of this stuff is completely made up and the Labour Party excel in sort of processes it applies to
05:27themselves
05:27and then they also excel in processes it applies to the rest of us.
05:30But it's like a bit, wake up and smell the coffee.
05:33We don't, even if we ever did live in that world, we definitely don't live in it now.
05:36We have got to have a functioning, effective, good government as soon as possible,
05:41not least just get sensibly through the next winter.
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