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00:00Now to another part of the world. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says he plans to, quote,
00:04get on with governing after his party suffered brutal losses in local council elections last week.
00:09Now, even though the results of that race don't have bearing on Parliament,
00:13pressure is mounting from within Starmer's own party for him to step down.
00:16Joyce, now to explain how we got here and what Starmer's odds are for keeping his job as our in
00:21-house Brit.
00:21That's Dave Merritt, Bloomberg senior executive editor and, frankly, our boss.
00:24Not the only reasons that we're having here today.
00:26No stress here whatsoever.
00:27We got these photographs this morning. Andy Burnham, mayor of Manchester, out for a run.
00:31Yeah.
00:32Wearing a shirt from a 2022 10K that he ran.
00:35Man of the people.
00:35A lot of interest in him. Man of the people.
00:38We have you. We don't have Lizzie Burton here.
00:39If Lizzie were here, I'd ask her, what is Manchesterism?
00:41This is a thing we keep hearing a lot about, and he's going to have to define it.
00:44But as he kind of makes this bid, or we assume he will, what is his brand of politics that
00:48he's bringing forward?
00:49I think that is what everyone's asking, and I think he's obviously much less familiar this side of the Atlantic.
00:54He's been a politician for a long time.
00:55He was in Tony Blair's cabinet back in the day.
00:59But for the last few years, he's been the mayor of Manchester.
01:01Very much.
01:02And the king of the north is one of the other nicknames.
01:04I've seen that in a couple places, yeah.
01:06He likes to bandy around.
01:08And look, Manchester as a city has been booming economically.
01:11It's been outpacing the rest of the country.
01:14And how much is that attributable to Andy Werner's policies?
01:17That can be debated.
01:19But, you know, he's very, very popular as politicians go.
01:22Not many of them are very popular these days, as you know.
01:24But when you look at the range of options that Labour have got after this disastrous local election result that
01:30you just referenced,
01:31he seems to be the person that everyone thinks might have the best chance of beating these insurgent parties because,
01:37of course, British politics is fracturing.
01:38You've got reform led by Nigel Farage and a rising Green Party led by this guy called Zach Polanski.
01:44And they're eating votes on the left and the right, the Labour Party, to the extent that it's looking impossible
01:49for them to win next time.
01:50Remember, this is just two years, not even two years, after a huge landslide victory for the Labour Party.
01:57And this is one of the extraordinary things in British politics now is that no one seems to be able
02:01to run the country for very long,
02:03even with a huge landslide, before their position has been questioned.
02:08It looks like they're going to have to resign.
02:09Well, let's step back for a sec because how did we get here?
02:12And is this a fait accompli?
02:14Is he done?
02:14And how long?
02:15Are we talking Liz Truss, head of lettuce duration, or can he hang in there and still fight for his
02:21job?
02:21As I'm checking this morning, there are no British papers with some perishable goods on the cover.
02:25That hasn't happened yet.
02:26Counting down the days because Starmer is saying he's going to stay in post.
02:30We have a bit of a timeline.
02:31Actually, I recommend, this is a bit of a thorny tale, I recommend going to Bloomberg.com this morning.
02:35Alex Wickham, who's our political editor in London, has written a piece.
02:38It's a big take today on Bloomberg.com.
02:39It's called How Care Starmer Imploded.
02:42There it is.
02:43And it traces us back to that landslide victory in July 2024, where he suddenly seemed to have all this
02:50power.
02:51And very quickly, through a series of missteps and decisions, his authority has been ebbing away.
02:57And kind of some self-owns, where he reversed course on like three major policies.
03:01U-turns were some things as well, policies that were unpopular.
03:04And of course, probably the biggest one of all was to do with right here in America.
03:08It was the U.S. ambassador, Peter Mandelson.
03:10Now, Bloomberg investigation revealed that his ties with Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein, had continued after Epstein's conviction.
03:17And that the government knew a little bit more about that than they led on when they appointed him as
03:22ambassador to the United States.
03:23That caused a huge scandal in Britain.
03:26And really was the moment, I think, where everyone felt this can't really go on.
03:31And his authority had been so undermined.
03:33And that was several months ago, cut back to last week, where things really kicked into gear.
03:38We had Wes Streeting, who's the health secretary, resigning from the cabinet right on the day, or the news was
03:45leaked on the day the king was making his speech.
03:47So kind of designed for maximum impact, undermining the government's agenda right there.
03:52He's gone for the cabinet with a letter saying that the current situation isn't sustainable.
03:56And now you have Andy Burnham, Mr. Manchester, king of the north, standing to get back into Parliament.
04:02One of the Labour MPs has stepped aside, given up their job, and vacated this seat.
04:06There will be what we call a by-election in Britain, a special election.
04:10If he wins that, by the way, that's a big if, because he's got to win that seat against a
04:14very popular reform party in that part of Britain,
04:17then there will be a contest, we assume, for the Labour premiership.
04:20And he's got to do that to be eligible.
04:22He's got to be that to be eligible. He's got to be in Parliament.
04:24So we've got a bit of a kind of slightly complex sequence of events, and kind of an unprecedented one.
04:28So this special election in a constituency in the north of England is potentially going to decide who the next
04:36prime minister is.
04:37I don't think we've ever been here before.
04:40What is his appetite for this so much? Is he being coy about this?
04:43We had Bridget Phillipson coming out and backing his return to Westminster today,
04:47so a cabinet member doing all of that.
04:49As we see Starmer adamant that he's sticking with this.
04:52Is Andy Burnham out front saying that he wants this to be the case?
04:56Are the knives out, I guess is what I want to know.
04:58Yeah, the knives haven't been quite out in the open.
05:01I think they're still kept in the sheaths at this point.
05:04And you've got cabinet members saying things like,
05:06well, we need our best players on the pitch if we're going to beat reform.
05:09But, you know, Andy Burnham had a go at getting a seat just a few months ago,
05:13and it was blocked by Keir Starmer's allies who run the Labour Party.
05:17He said, no, you cannot do this because it was seen as too much of a risk.
05:20Now that they're saying, fine, you can go ahead,
05:22it shows even more that his power and authority has been leeching away.
05:28And maybe in public he is saying he's going to keep fighting
05:31and he's going to keep on with the job and all these things.
05:33But in private, perhaps, you assume,
05:36if he's allowing Mandy Burnham so easily to come back in,
05:39there's an acceptance that maybe his time might be out.
05:41And Nigel Farage is doing what at this point?
05:43Sitting back and smiling.
05:44That's my other question.
05:45A cigarette and a pint, as he normally does.
05:48But is there a risk that, you know,
05:49this not quite out-in-the-open infighting or uncertainty in Labour
05:53could give even more momentum and seats to Farage as we come up in general?
05:57I think that's exactly the point.
05:59You know, when they won this big landslide,
06:03Keir Starmer stood up and said,
06:04the psychodramas of the Tory party are over.
06:07We're the grown-ups back in the room.
06:08You can trust us not to descend into infighting and turfing up.
06:13And look where we are.
06:14Just two years later, it's a carbon copy.
06:16Now, if you're Nigel Farage, you're going to say,
06:18look, they're all the same.
06:19Labour, Tory, the old parties, they are dead.
06:22They are yesterday's news.
06:25Come and vote for us.
06:26We're the party to bring you the sort of reform that will make your lives better.
06:29So that's the argument they're making.
06:30That's the argument they kind of won in those local elections.
06:33They stole councils from both the Tories and Labour across the country,
06:371,500 or so council seats.
06:40It's so Farage will be sitting thinking,
06:42I've got quite a good chance of actually beating Andy Burnham.
06:44So it's kind of a lose-lose for Keir Starmer this special election.
06:48If Andy Burnham wins, OK, maybe Labour can defeat reform under a Burnham government,
06:54but Starmer's job is probably toast.
06:56If they lose, then, well, then no one can beat reform.
06:59And there's going to be a huge amount of existential angst within the Labour Party
07:03and the Tories as well that Nigel Farage is unstoppable.
07:05Let me go back to the special relationship and to Alex Wickham's fine TikTok that you mentioned
07:10that's on the Bloomberg today and read a little bit from it.
07:13A person close to Starmer blamed Trump as singularly responsible for the failure of his premiership.
07:17They say, from the moment Trump was elected,
07:19the international crises that followed meant it was impossible for the prime minister
07:22to focus on the domestic priorities of voters.
07:25What if that has changed?
07:27Why, with a new prime minister, won't the circumstance be the same,
07:30that we're still in a world in which the whims and efforts of President Trump
07:34stand to scuttle any sort of domestic policymaking or priorities
07:37that a prime minister would have in place?
07:38Yeah, I mean, it's probably quite easy, isn't it, to blame Donald Trump
07:41to kind of, you know, for the failure of the premiership.
07:42I think it's a bit of a stretch.
07:44I think, you know, Keir Starmer has departed from the norm of British prime ministers
07:49over the last decades in not joining the American administration in a conflict.
07:54I mean, Tony Blair, of course.
07:55Iraq, yeah.
07:56In the Iraq war.
07:57And Tony Blair came out and was quite vocal.
07:59Even that cost him his job, arguably, as well.
08:02But he came out and said, really, you have to follow America.
08:05The special relationship is too important.
08:07But it's very unpopular with the British public.
08:09So Keir Starmer took a different tack there.
08:12I would argue, actually, that sort of shored up his standing with the British public a little bit.
08:17You know, there's a bit of that sense of, well, you've got to sometimes stand up
08:20for what you believe in versus just following Donald Trump.
08:22Donald Trump is very unpopular in Britain.
08:24So I don't think tagging your policies to him is a pathway for success.
08:28And you can be sure that Andy Burnham, who is even more known to be slightly more on
08:33the left of the party, I don't think he's going to be tacking any closer to the Republicans
08:39if he takes office as well.
08:41I always found it a very interesting failsafe in British politics that, you know, you elect
08:45the party and then they kind of internally choose who leads the country.
08:49It's such a foreign concept to us in the U.S.
08:52But it's a nice bit of a failsafe in that if the guy is not delivering even internally,
08:57you can vote him out.
08:59But the problem is, is you guys have had five prime ministers in the last 10 years.
09:03That's the flip side.
09:04Is your failsafe causing instability?
09:06It is causing instability.
09:07There's been lots of articles written in the last few days.
09:09Is Britain ungovernable?
09:10You know, can anyone really pull together the sort of coalition that's needed to have
09:15any sort of longevity in office of the sort that we saw with Margaret Thatcher or Tony
09:20Blair, who won three elections?
09:22It's sort of unimaginable these days.
09:24I don't know.
09:25I mean, I think a lot of it comes down to personality and communication as well.
09:28You know, Keir Starmer did win a big election victory.
09:31But actually, when you looked under the hood of the numbers, it was kind of a broad but shallow
09:36victory.
09:37A lot of people had very thin majorities.
09:39And remember, the Tories have been in power for all this time, the psychodramas, Brexit.
09:43And you could argue that he won kind of in spite of himself, really.
09:47He won just because it was anybody but the Conservatives.
09:50So it was never built on the strongest foundations, this particular administration or this particular
09:56Labour prime minister.
09:58But, you know, someone with the personality, this is what they hope, someone like Andy
10:02Burnham, who has proved to be some, that he has longevity in Manchester.
10:07Can you replicate that?
10:08But of course, Boris Johnson, he was another mayor.
10:12Again, came into power with a big landslide.
10:15And then not long after, again, that power dissipated.
10:18And that parliamentary mechanism that you just referenced kicks into gear and people
10:23decide that they have to tough them out.
10:25I saw Jeremy Corbyn expressing some sympathy for Keir Starmer in The Guardian this morning.
10:29In the minute that we have left with you, a big theme of Alex's piece is the rise of
10:32nationalism throughout the UK.
10:34How much does that stand to kind of shape British politics here?
10:36Right as we speak, there are two marches going on in London, and the police have a huge operation
10:41to try to keep them apart.
10:43One is this one led by this nationalist Tommy Robinson called Unite the Nation, and the
10:48other one is a pro-Palestine march.
10:49And there are many, many people, there's many police trying to keep the order on the streets.
10:53You know, there is a lot of emotion in this.
10:55Farage taps into this very effectively, and we've seen that success he's had at the ballot
11:01box.
11:02Andy Burnham's message is going to be to try to unite things and create a coalition.
11:06We're going to have to see if that's possible.
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