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00:00As the leadership race conversation continues to heat up, it's increasingly looking like Andy
00:04Burnham is the guy. Well, make a field by-election pending, of course. We all know he's got a fight
00:10on his hands against reform. Meanwhile, Wes Streeting has been out and about touting the
00:15idea of a Brexit do-over, and Keir Starmer is very much staying put. And what's the mood like
00:21in the very end days of a number 10? Spoiler, actually surprisingly fun. And that's what we'll
00:27be discussing today. I'm Helen McNamara, the former Deputy Cabinet Secretary. And I'm
00:31Clea Watson, former Special Advisor to Theresa May and Boris Johnson. And this is In The Room.
00:39So before we get into it, we'd love it if you follow us on Instagram, where you can find all
00:44the best bits of the show. Our handle there is at intheroom.pod. And you can also watch us on
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00:56burning question, or if you want to just send us some fan mail, you can email us these days
01:00on intheroom at independent.co.uk. So let's get cracking. Over the weekend, Wes Streeting
01:06was speaking at the Progress Think Tanks conference, where he announced ahead of an actual leadership
01:12contest that he will be a runner. And he also outlined that he would like Britain to rejoin
01:17the EU and that Brexit has been a disaster.
01:20Hmm. So Wes's comments have been met with criticism, including from his own party, in
01:25fact, quite strongly from his own party, particularly from Lisa Nandy, who's the Culture
01:30Secretary on the Laura Kunzberg show.
01:32All right. Here's what she had to say.
01:34I actually think this is just a bit odd. I listened to what Wes had to say very carefully
01:39yesterday. And I know that he's got a strong view about this and always has had that we
01:44shouldn't have left the European Union. And, you know, frankly, that's one that I share.
01:47I campaigned for Remain. I think it was a mistake. And I think the Brexit deal has been a real
01:53problem for us. But I don't really understand why the sudden focus on Europe. We're already
02:01as a government trying to repair in a pragmatic way the needless damage that was done by that
02:06poor Brexit deal to people's living standards in towns like mine without reopening the circular
02:12arguments that we ended up in as a country.
02:14God, she's good, isn't she? You do think, you know, we always talk about a man in the
02:20north-west. Why don't we have a woman in the north-west standing? But she's not being
02:23touted at all as leader. She's like a good communicator. I think she made the very, very
02:28strong case against Wes Struching's position just then, better than anyone else in government
02:32has been able to do.
02:33Yes. And look, we will get on. More to come on what we think about what Wes said about Brexit
02:37and where that leaves everybody. Following the news that Andy Burnham will be standing in
02:41Makerfield, which everybody has now agreed to pronounce Makerfield as well, which I'm
02:45very, personally very pleased about. But Keir Starmer has said that he will back a Labour
02:49candidate 100%, whomsoever that candidate may be. Whether that is a blessing or curse
02:54remains to be seen.
02:55And he's right to say that because this is going to be an incredibly tough race against
02:59reform and Labour need to be really united here because whoever it is, most likely Andy
03:04Burnham has got a hell of a fight on their hands.
03:07Burnham has pushed back quite strongly on the West Streeting, we should rejoin the EU point
03:13and said that his agenda will have a relentlessly domestic focus.
03:17And then meanwhile, Keir Starmer, who is actually still Prime Minister, by the way, continues to
03:22get on with his job. He's in tortoise mode, as we've discussed on Friday. He said, I'm focused
03:28on the job that I was asked to do, which is to serve my country and to carry out my
03:31duties
03:32as Prime Minister of the country. And we're going to talk a little later on about what
03:36is to come in the coming weeks to him, because it's actually not as gloomy as you might think.
03:43It was not helpful of West Streeting to evapen the Brexit debate in his speech on Saturday.
03:50And let's not forget that much as actually Andy Burnham is positioning his by-election fight
03:56and the lot of talk in Labour, this is a kind of big battle of ideas. This is a, it's
04:01Labour
04:02versus reform, it's a heavyweight versus heavyweight competition. Actually, this is also the Labour
04:07Party punching itself in the face and being mean to each other again. And we're streeting,
04:13standing there on a public platform and trying to reopen the debate around Brexit, when the
04:19battle in question at the moment is a constituency, which is very heavily voted to leave, is not
04:27a useful, helpful thing to do to his former colleague and friend Andy Burnham. So it's
04:32definitely drawing of a big red line, I would say. He was pretty strong in his language. We're
04:39streeting at this speech. He said Brexit was a catastrophic mistake. And something that really
04:45caught my eye and made me laugh, clearly thinking of you and some of our friends was that he said
04:52that Vote Leave, who obviously, you know, pantomime villains for people like West Streeting,
04:57had thought that England could forge or the UK could forge a free global free trade nirvana,
05:03and that the assumption of Vote Leave had been that the East India Company was still at our
05:09disposal, which of all of the weird comments, I just thought was a ridiculous thing to say.
05:12Yeah, it was just a weird way to put it. Why not talk about the big red bus, which makes
05:17a lot more
05:17sense to people. Andy Burnham has a very specific electorate to be speaking to. And, you know,
05:23we have looked at this before, 65% of them voted leave in the EU referendum in 2016. 50%
05:31of them
05:31voted reform a couple of weeks ago in the local elections. I would say contrasting with that,
05:38where streeting is, is Labour's have focused on Labour MPs, Labour members, Southern wealthy,
05:46I mean, that's where the kind of core Labour vote is heading now, Southern wealthier rejoin Remainer
05:52types. So he can afford to do this. But it is a massive problem for Andy Burnham, you know,
05:58where streeting is just saying what he thinks on stage. He's saying, as you as you pointed out,
06:02quite weird inflammatory stuff that is basically quite insulting. And lots of Labour MPs have said
06:07to various journalists over the weekend, number one, how catastrophically unhelpful.
06:12Number two, you couldn't make us look more sort of insulting that we're telling people who voted
06:17for leave and who in fact are kind of bread and butter voters, that they're wrong, and they're
06:23ignorant, and that we're still not listening to the message they were actually trying to give us by
06:30voting leave in the first place. Yeah, because let's not forget, the actual by election here is an
06:35absolute head to head battle between Labour and reform. And there are two kind of there's the there's the
06:41Brexit problem. But there is also the kind of talking down our country, not patriotic, what
06:46makes you think that we can't we need the EU. Actually, there is a real boosterism thing. It's
06:51a very boosterism thing about the way that Andy Burnham talks about the UK, actually, and talks about
06:55Manchester and talks about the best that we could be. So I think Wes Streeting made a mistake in that
06:59as well. The other thing that is really problematic about what Wes Streeting said, and the way he set his
07:05stall out, there are people and you know, the Conservative opposition are very high on this
07:11list of people who will, if the Prime Minister changes, who will say, this is an outrage, there
07:17ought to be a general election, the country voted for Keir Starmer, please give us a general election,
07:22because it's fairly and squarely in their interest to do so. The best argument against that is,
07:27actually, we haven't changed any of the policies in our manifesto. This is the same guy,
07:30you know, same old government, slightly better version, new and improved, 2.0, different guy,
07:36but same thing. The Labour manifesto for 2024 is crystal clear about not rejoining the EU.
07:43It's crystal clear about a whole series of red lines, which frankly, Keir Starmer has come quite
07:48close to getting, you know, talking about dynamic alignment, for those of you Brexit nerds. He's come
07:53quite close to, you know, wanting to ask questions about the customs union or various other bits of the
07:59arrangement with Europe in recent weeks. But it is super unhelpful for West Streeting to be saying
08:05that actually, the Labour Prime Minister or the Labour leader should go against what the country
08:10voted for. Yeah, I totally agree. And actually, let's cast our minds back to the 2019 general
08:15election, which was like another run at, you know, we'd had a few years then, three years of
08:22various people who'd voted to remain trying to forge a rejoin or a second referendum. But actually,
08:28Boris Johnson won that general election with a very straightforward three word slogan,
08:33get Brexit done. Now, debate on whether that is actually what he followed through on. And people
08:40can talk until the cows come home about whether the deal he eventually got was the right one and a
08:47good
08:47one. But one of Labour's catastrophic weaknesses in that general election was that they didn't really
08:53have their story straight on Brexit. And therefore, lots of the people, including people in Makerfield,
08:59who might have been lifelong Labour supporters, did go with Boris Johnson, because they thought,
09:06this guy gets it, you know, and then 2024 change. Yes, that's what I want. And it's still not happening.
09:13And so reopening this whole thing is just a massive, massive mistake.
09:17And it just sounds so self indulgent. Because the other thing is, this isn't a question about
09:21going back to 2016, and would have should have could have done something different. The question
09:26that we'd have to think about now is, do we want to rejoin the EU? So that is different to
09:31should
09:32we have stayed in the first place. And one of the things that I don't think is often understood,
09:36and you and I've had this conversation over the years, is that actually, you know, it didn't quite
09:40fit neatly on a poster. And I don't know why the campaign didn't make more of this at the time.
09:44But we had
09:44such a sweet deal with the EU in 2015. So David Cameron's team had negotiated a much better deal.
09:52But already, the UK was in a special category of, we didn't have the same rules of free movement,
09:58we did have much more flexibility about all sorts of things, we'd used our the geographic convenience
10:02of having a bit of sea between us and France, to opt out of all sorts of things. So it
10:07was massively
10:08financially advantageous, which, by the way, why some people in the EU were super keen to see the
10:12back of us, because we were getting a really good deal. And we will not be offered, if we ever
10:18had
10:18to, or wanted to join the EU, we'd have to go on bended knee, and be given a really, we'd
10:24get
10:25clattered around the head.
10:26Yeah, absolutely. I remember David Cameron, when he got his renegotiated deal in February 2016, I was
10:32working on the Vote Leave campaign. And we had this campaign meeting. And we all said this is,
10:37this is a good deal. But obviously, that wasn't in line with our campaign.
10:41But they didn't make anything of it. They didn't talk about the merits of the deal. And it just
10:47sort of disappeared from the national conversation within days. And that is with the full heft of the
10:53Remain campaign and the government communications machine behind it. And we were, you know, we were
10:58pretty ragtag group who'd been able to just not talk about this deal. You're right. And actually,
11:03the public understand this, too. There's a sort of quantitative and qualitative question here.
11:09Pollsters can ask broad swathes of people, if you took a time machine back to 2016, how would you vote
11:15now? And actually, quite a lot of people would now vote Remain. That does include, obviously, kind of
11:21new people coming into the electorate, obviously, people who were not of the voting age in 2016 now are,
11:27that kind of thing. But when you ask on a more qualitative measure in focus groups, say,
11:34would you like to rejoin? And then you explain exactly as you've just set out what that means
11:39and the position that we're coming from. And particularly, if you mention free movement,
11:44people change their minds.
11:45Absolutely. And, you know, it's worth saying, it's probably not necessarily going back to the
11:50precise terms of whether we're better or worse off in the EU. One of the big things that's changed
11:55since 2016 is the kind of revealed incompetence of our governing. And that goes straight to the heart
12:01of this battle of ideas that Andy Burnham is now having is what kind of country do we want to
12:06be?
12:06Who are we as a nation? And there are some really big arguments about where we've
12:10gone wrong. There's a ridiculous argument going on about Andy Burnham has said something in his very
12:15good, by the way, election communications, his party political stuff. It's not party political,
12:20but it's really, really good with elbow. It's like 1990s redux in an absolutely brilliant way
12:28for some of us. But he, he's got this thing about, you know, the country's been going wrong for 40
12:33years
12:34and everyone's been going crackers about that. Cause it's like, what, 1986 was peak, was it?
12:38And, and there is a bit of, you know, and he was in part of all of these governments, but
12:41there is
12:42a, as just as Lisa and Andy said in that clip, that some of the problems that we are seeing
12:47today
12:47have really, really, really long routes. And so as we've, you and I've said a few times,
12:52the Brexit vote is a symptom, not necessarily a cause. It's a cause of all sorts of other things,
12:57but it is also people saying, actually, I just don't think this works. I should say,
13:01if we're allowed to keep this into an, into the edit that we are coming up to the 10th anniversary
13:05of the Brexit referendum quite soon. And Cleo and I have got some quite exciting plans of what we might
13:10do and what we might bring you just to try to give you a little bit of,
13:14in the room from both Cleo's point of view, obviously in the Vote Leave campaign,
13:18but also speaking to some people on the Remain side too.
13:21Shall we talk a bit about our friend Andy, our friend in the North, Andy Burnham?
13:27Let's. Okay. Well, shall we begin with, Andy Burnham is very popular, particularly within the Labour Party.
13:33So a YouGov poll that has just come out of Labour voters found that 47% of them would vote
13:38for Burnham
13:39versus 37% for Wes Streeting and 8% for Angela Rayner. But it gets much more interesting in head
13:45to head.
13:46So he beats everybody in a head to head and Wes Streeting doesn't beat anybody, including Keir Starmer.
13:51I mean, we'll talk about this, I imagine, over the coming weeks before the by-election on June the 18th,
13:56but there is a groundswell of quite sensible voices saying, actually,
14:00if Andy Burnham can demonstrate that he wins this on June the 18th, and he's basically won the battle of
14:06ideas with reform,
14:07then there shouldn't be a long Labour leadership contest. He should be effectively crowned in the same way that they
14:12handed over power from Blair to Brown.
14:15Yeah, a matter of days.
14:16Perhaps, hopefully, a slightly more successful version of that, Andy would say.
14:19Right. And then, you know, we're at the races again with a different Prime Minister with some energy underneath them.
14:25It sounds like a really ridiculously insidery thing to say. I guess that's why we're here.
14:31But the difference between becoming Prime Minister at the end of June and becoming Prime Minister at the end of
14:37September is much more than those three months would suggest.
14:41It's really, really, in terms of his ability to get cracking, get up and running, use the period of the
14:46summer, particularly summer recess when Parliament's not there,
14:49to do lots and lots of work and be able to get those months, that will be worth solid gold
14:55in terms of where the Labour Party have got to before the next election.
14:58So, if you're somebody who would like Labour to win the next election, and Andy Burnham wins the vote on
15:04June the 18th,
15:05then you should be arguing for, let's not have, like, three months of the Labour Party knocking spots off each
15:11other,
15:11undermining their credibility further, having ridiculous arguments like this one where streeting started last weekend, and let's just get going.
15:18Not least because we've talked at length about the cost of living crisis, and going into winter, that will feel
15:24so much worse.
15:25So, having time over the summer to prepare for what are major problems.
15:29And Andy Burnham has said he's going to have an aggressively domestic agenda, so it's the obvious time to get
15:37cracking.
15:37And it's good for the government. You know, he's got all these relationships with the civil service to repair.
15:42Why not use the summer to do that, rather than conference period, which is great.
15:48Conference period. It's clear I had a little flash of panic about conference period.
15:51Yeah. Can I also just go into, like, my own private bit on Andy Burnham, what I really felt for
15:57him on Saturday,
15:58when he was filmed running along a dual carriageway.
16:01Ah, is this Andy Burnham in his short shorts?
16:03Oh, my Lord, are they short.
16:05But I just thought, poor you, you've gone out for a run.
16:08I really don't think it was one of those stage ones, because you'd have really thought the outfit through a
16:13bit better.
16:14And it reminded me of those pictures of Boris Johnson when he used to go out running.
16:17And quite often in, like, brogues, like his work shoes and swimming trunks, which, you know, if you've worn swimming
16:23trunks, there's mesh in there.
16:24That's chafe central. I don't know what he was thinking.
16:27I don't know. I think, to be fair to Andy Burnham, he's slightly more of a runner than, in many
16:31senses, than Boris Johnson.
16:33But I think that was a really... Andy Burnham has spent most of his adult life, if not all of
16:37his adult life, in politics.
16:39He will never have come up against what he's facing now.
16:43And I think that that's what he'll see in this, the by-election period, in terms of the scrutiny, in
16:48terms of the paparazzi, in terms of every single minute or second of his life, everything he's ever said is
16:53going to be entirely crawled over.
16:56And it's a bit like, welcome to your new life. Do you really want this?
16:59And you do feel a bit for him.
17:01There's been many pictures of him now, slightly wearing longer shorts, going for his run, which is, you know, well
17:07done, Andy.
17:08Well done, PR people.
17:09Well done, PR people. But it is a new reality, which he's in.
17:13Well, and he's already being accused of, without having actually announced anything yet, he's already being accused of U-turns.
17:18So, you know, in response to West Streeting's Brexit comments, Andy Burnham actually repeated what he's already said, essentially.
17:26He said a year ago, I would love to rejoin the EU in my lifetime.
17:30And this weekend, after West Streeting said, we should rejoin, he said, like, maybe one day, but I just don't
17:37think that is on the agenda right now.
17:38There are other things to be getting on with, much like Lisa and Andy on the BBC.
17:43And similarly, he has said that he would abide by Rachel Reeves's fiscal rules, too.
17:48And it's almost like the chance of governing creeping up on you means you can't just sort of say what
17:53you want.
17:54Because if you remember, he said in the autumn that the bond markets should, the government should not be in
17:58hock to the bond markets, which is tricky because that's who we borrow from.
18:03You don't have to be in hock for them, but you do have to hope that they believe in what
18:06you're doing, for sure.
18:07There's a very old Labour, new Labour joke about Andy Burnham, which is a Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynite
18:12walk into a bar.
18:13The barman says, hello, Andy.
18:15OK, I'm not denying that isn't a cracker.
18:18It's a great joke.
18:19But nothing's funnier than explaining a joke.
18:21So perhaps you could explain it.
18:24The joke is getting at Cleo that Andy Burnham is quite flexible in both his political allegiances to the different
18:30party leaders has been.
18:31And he's been more agile than other people who've made a success to the Labour Party.
18:35I mean, let's just pause on that.
18:36This guy was Tony Rares' special advisor.
18:38He managed to sail all the way through, become a minister and an MP in the Blair government, become a
18:45secretary of state under Gordon Brown.
18:47OK, he didn't win two leadership contests while they were in opposition.
18:50But then he was still kind of favoured by Corbyn.
18:53Like, he's managed to navigate the kind of slings and arrows of the Labour Party, which by itself is pretty
18:59impressive over the last 20, 30 years, and still stay in there.
19:02He's very, yeah, committed to his ideology, which is mainly about the north of England, I think.
19:08But what he's managed to do with that being labelled a snake, which is quite good going.
19:11Yes.
19:12Because, you know, under any other guys, that could be quite sneaky behaviour.
19:16But, you know, there's a bit of chat about, is he morally flexible on taking policy positions?
19:22But no one really seems to hold it kind of ethically against him as a bad person.
19:28No, and he's so helped by having been out of Westminster for so long, that basically the best thing that
19:32could have happened to him,
19:33and apart from it's the best thing that could have happened to him, because what's happened in Manchester is really
19:37good,
19:37and he's done a brilliant job, and it's been fantastic, and it's a really important work in and of itself.
19:42It means he's absolutely been on the sidelines for all of the kind of everybody throwing shit at each other
19:47for years and years and years,
19:49and can come back in as a genuine messiah.
19:52But you like it when people change their minds a bit, don't you?
19:54Do you know what? I do like it when people change their minds a bit,
19:56because this notion that you should have had exactly the same view since you were, you know, 21 is troubling.
20:02I think that he's very much branding himself the authentic Andy, authentic Andy trademark that we're seeing now
20:09is very much what he's been doing in Manchester since 2017 and 18, to his credit.
20:14So he has pretty much run a really, he talks a lot left, Andy Burnham, when push comes to shove,
20:21but he behaves slightly in a broader church way in the political spectrum, I would say.
20:25He's formed really good alliances in Manchester.
20:28He's worked very sensibly with business.
20:29He's actually quite, if he can pull off this trick of sounding like a man of the people,
20:35and being somebody who can actually govern in an effective way, then, you know, things might be better.
20:40He will get a lot of people going back and finding what he has said and not said,
20:45and it will not be entirely consistent.
20:48Well, you've worked with him, haven't you, as a government minister?
20:50I worked for him.
20:51Worked for him.
20:52So who is the authentic Andy Burnham then, TM?
20:55TM.
20:56So he's, so my experience for Andy, so I worked for Andy when he was Secretary of State for Culture,
21:01Media and Sport back in the day under the Blair and Brown government.
21:04So is that pre-run up to, is that pre-London Olympics bid?
21:09I think he was Secretary of State under Gordon Brown, basically.
21:11So it was after he'd run the bid and he was, he'd been massively involved in football.
21:17He'd been a special advisor in Tony Blair's number 10.
21:20He'd worked for Chris Smith, I think.
21:22He's a very DCMS and it's partly why I've got a little smile on my face because Andy Burnham, I
21:27think more so than any modern politician,
21:29really understands that some of the strengths in this country come from all of the things in the Department for
21:35Culture, Media and Sport.
21:36It's our, it's our creative industries, it's our amazing TV, it's our sport, it's our football, it's all of these
21:42things.
21:42It's very cool, Britannia.
21:43It's very cool.
21:44So, Britannia Blair.
21:45And I can, I see that Oasis have said he can use their songs.
21:48The 90s are properly back, baby.
21:50There's no bad that can come of this.
21:53But he's, he's nice, actually.
21:55Do you know what, he's, he genuinely is nice.
21:57Is he competent, Helen?
21:59He, yes.
22:01Yes.
22:01Okay.
22:02That sounded impartic.
22:04Well, it's like, he wasn't the world's most decisive Secretary of State, it's fair to say.
22:09So, he did find making a decision and sticking to something tricky.
22:16But, it's a long time ago.
22:17There's no kind of, I can't think of anybody who's got a story about Andy Burnham.
22:23And the Civil Service has a lot of stories, right?
22:24And we all talk to each other all the time.
22:26So, even the people that you might not think in the public, you know, people who kind of have some
22:30sort of halo, can be awful to work for.
22:32People, people liked working for Andy Burnham.
22:34He's quite fun.
22:35He was very committed to his wife and his kids and he's a very proper family guy.
22:40Like, comedically northern, I would, I would say, as a northerner.
22:44Well, I think famously, when asked what his favourite biscuit is, he said chips and gravy.
22:48Come on.
22:48What?
22:49There's a lot to love about that.
22:50All right.
22:50Well, you worked with him when he was in government.
22:52That was quite a long time ago.
22:53You were both, you were both babies then.
22:55But your last job was as deputy cabinet secretary.
22:58So, let's say the stakes are raised quite a bit once you come into number 10 in the cabinet office.
23:03Do you think he has what it takes to be a good prime minister?
23:06Yes.
23:07I think, I know, and that's full straight answer.
23:09So, I think what he's done in Manchester is amazing, actually.
23:13And it's not just him.
23:14And I really like, there's a good long, and we've all been busy watching things that Andy Burnham has said
23:19recently, I guess.
23:20There's a really good, long interview he did with Newsnight, and to his credit, he credits other people.
23:26So, there was an amazing guy called Howard Bernstein, who is the civil servant version of kind of the guy
23:30who sorted out Manchester.
23:32And Andy's very generous to him.
23:34He's generous to the other Labour leaders who have been before him.
23:37Manchester has achieved 3% growth when the rest of the country really hasn't.
23:42And if you go to Manchester, I remember being there for the Conservative Conference last year, and you step off
23:46the train.
23:46And I find this painful as a Yorkshire woman.
23:48But you think, actually, this is really great.
23:52It's really great, and it looks nice, and it's interesting, and it's buzzy.
23:56And if Andy can bring to the rest of the country what he and his team and everything else has
24:02done for Manchester, then yeah, absolutely.
24:04Well, and I also think, you know, the Greater Manchester Police Force is outperforming everyone.
24:09It's really impressive.
24:10And in fact, they are going into other constabularies and kind of giving demonstrations and explaining how they've managed to
24:16bring crime down
24:17and how their policing works.
24:19And it would be great if you took that with him.
24:22And I would say keep Shibana Mahmood in the Home Office and put these lessons writ large across the UK.
24:29I'm not sure mine and your love for Shibana Mahmood does her any favours, by the way.
24:32I know.
24:33She's not even 1% in the Labour membership pool.
24:35And Alkan's a zero, so sorry, guys.
24:37We do not pick winners round here.
24:40The other thing that I'd say is that I hope that he manages to have Andy Burnham as Prime Minister.
24:44So he's been very, very strong in all this rhetoric about Whitehall not working and Westminster not working.
24:50If he then becomes the Prime Minister and turns up and does absolutely nothing about some fundamentals, then where are
24:57we?
24:58So I would hope that one of the things that he's starting to think about is actually what does that
25:02look like?
25:03Not talking about rewiring the state, but how do you actually get accountability, purpose, sort out what's going on in
25:10Westminster and Whitehall
25:11so that that bit of the government also delivers for everyone?
25:14Let's not forget that Keir Starmer is still the Prime Minister.
25:17And I have been feeling for him because he must be feeling terrible.
25:22The atmosphere in that building in these end-of-day stages are really depressing.
25:28So you kind of walk in, there's just a sense of dread.
25:31You're still doing the kind of charity events and, you know, bits and bobs up in the reception rooms where
25:37you have to act really cheerful.
25:39He's having to go out and do events to talk about policies and stuff, sitting in a cafe, having a
25:44cup of tea, trying to look cheery.
25:46He had to look cheery going to vote in the local elections with his wife.
25:49And, you know, he can't authentically look how he actually feels because everyone would think, my God, you know, he
25:57looks so depressed.
25:58He looks like he's hungover almost.
26:00And we've already had the photos, you know, the now trademark photos of Prime Minister looking appalled,
26:06leaving the Commons in the back of the ministerial jag in like high flash photography where it's a private moment.
26:14Oh, the Thatcher redux.
26:15Terrible.
26:16And they've all had it.
26:17They've all had it.
26:18But actually, you know, this bit is terrible.
26:22But once it's over, once you once the kind of grit, grit, grit is over, there's actually a sense of
26:27relief, I think.
26:29And once you get over the anticlimax, there's actually a little fun period.
26:32I hope so.
26:33I do think it is to your point is just grim.
26:35I mean, he's so we were there together for the end of Theresa May's time.
26:41And I remember from a civil service perspective, obviously, you are, you know, you're going to be there.
26:45So it's a slightly different dynamic.
26:48But you are feeling so these are the people you work really closely with, and the political advisors and the
26:54big boss, you can't help thinking if you're working very closely for the Prime Minister that you've let them down.
26:59If they've managed to, if it's gone this badly, it must be also slightly your fault.
27:03And you definitely feel a bit of that.
27:05And you feel a bit of what can we do to help make it easier?
27:09Because the personal strain and stress is awful.
27:12And you can see that.
27:13And you sort of think, how do I, how do I try to jolly this along and make these people
27:17feel cheerful?
27:18And you were good at that.
27:20Yes, I remember doing a lot of that.
27:22I remember we got the England cricket team in for Theresa May right in the last.
27:27Because they just won the World Cup.
27:29They had.
27:29They had.
27:30You just think, you know, this person, whatever you think, the Prime Minister's given massive amount of public service to
27:35the country, and they sacrifice a lot.
27:38And that is every single Prime Minister does that.
27:40And we do have cause to be grateful for them, because it's a horrible, horrible job.
27:44The other thing you remember at these times, if you're right in the centre, is who shows up.
27:49So it's quite tempting, because, you know, people are venal and craven and like to look after themselves, that all
27:54of the really super important people who trot around when the Prime Minister's on the high, just disappear when it's
28:00looking a bit shaky.
28:02And you really remember, whether it is the chair of this business, or this FTSE chief executive, or the person
28:07from a charity, whoever it is, who comes into number 10, is totally gracious,
28:11and treats the Prime Minister as if they are, rightly, the Prime Minister of the land, and nothing else is
28:15going on.
28:16You are so, so grateful to those people.
28:18It really stays with you.
28:19That's like the proper thing to do in these times.
28:21I disappeared.
28:21I went on holiday.
28:22You did.
28:24But for Keir Starmer, I think it must be even worse, because, you know, I don't know if people have
28:28seen this, but More In Common have put out a quite interesting graphic,
28:32where they've asked the public, what do you think Keir Starmer's greatest achievement is?
28:37And it's one of those word association bubbles.
28:39And so the most common word comes out the biggest, and it's an enormous nothing.
28:44And there's a tiny bit of Trump, tiny bit of Iran war, tiny bit of NHS waiting lists.
28:50And then when you ask what his greatest mistake has been, it's an enormous everything.
28:54I mean, it must just, can you imagine feeling, it's sort of double misery, because people like Wes Dreesing, we've
29:02talked about this before,
29:03the Labour Party are very, they've known each other for a long time, a lot of these guys.
29:07So there's the stabbing in the back of someone who's actually a personal friend.
29:11But also just to feel like vast swathes of the public, despite you doing what you think is your best,
29:17viscerally dislike you.
29:19Yes, absolutely.
29:19So to segue into a totally different podcast, probably, we should hope that the Arsenal, Arsenal win the Arsenal,
29:26we should hope that Arsenal win the Premier League, and that before Keir Starmer departs,
29:30he's able to entertain the Arsenal team somewhere in number 10, that he has a, really enjoys trooping of the
29:36colour,
29:36you know, all of the other stuff that's coming up, which is quite nice in the next few weeks.
29:41Yeah, I agree.
29:42So hold on, Keir, it's crap for a bit longer.
29:45But then naturally, well, it depends.
29:48If Andy wins the by-election, you might just have a couple of days to squeeze out what enjoyment you
29:51can.
29:52Keir Starmer could also have the last laugh here.
29:54This is a very tight by-election.
29:56We shouldn't rule out the possibility of Andy Burnham losing.
30:01And then I think all bets are off in terms of what happens to Labour leadership.
30:04God, we won't be laughing.
30:06No.
30:10Let's talk a bit about our advice for Andy Burnham and perhaps even Wes Streeting going forward.
30:18I'm going to go first just because I'm feeling greedy.
30:21Step one, win the by-election.
30:24So, well, get selected.
30:26Get selected, yes.
30:27Get selected and then win the by-election, which is no easy task.
30:32But I just want to contain our by-election fever for now.
30:35We'll talk about that another day because as people are starting to pick up, I've really got the hots for
30:40by-elections.
30:41And this is a doozy.
30:43But let's just pretend that he has won the by-election and it's the 19th of June and we've woken
30:49up and Andy Burnham is the MP for Makerfield.
30:53What happens next?
30:55So, I think he needs to hit the ground running at a massive pace, even faster than he runs, actually,
31:03probably.
31:03So, this needs to feel a bit like 1997 when the Labour Party came in where they just were like
31:09bang, bang.
31:10Big announcement after big announcement after big announcement.
31:13It kind of set the tone for Crikey.
31:15And so, a really good version of Andy Burnham becoming the Prime Minister is that we're left with our heads
31:21spinning, effectively, not knowing kind of what sort of what he is.
31:25Because I think that the magic that Andy Burnham can bring, if you look at what he's done in Manchester,
31:29is he can tack both left and right really, really quickly.
31:33So, you could both re-nationalise the water industry and open oil and gas in the North Sea.
31:39And that would confuse the hell out of Westminster politics.
31:42Like, I think he's genuinely got the space to make it very confusing for everybody else to work out how
31:47to oppose what he's doing.
31:49I think he has to come in and it has to feel and look really different.
31:53And, of course, Labour can't afford to waste their talent and there might be all sorts of talented people in
31:58the ministerial team who are experienced.
31:59And having wholly fresh new people who don't know their way from one end of a red box to another
32:06might not be a good idea.
32:07But the country really needs change.
32:10It needs to look and feel like change.
32:11It needs to be different.
32:12And there needs to be people who are totally loyal to Andy Burnham.
32:15And only he'll know who that is.
32:16Give us some interesting people.
32:18Give us some people with different stories.
32:20There's loads of really talented people in that intake in the Labour Party.
32:23There's loads of really talented people in the country who actually can see the situation that we are in, forget
32:29about party politics for a second, as existential for us as an economy.
32:33So, hopefully, she says, a lot of hope here, hopefully Andy Burnham as prime minister could do the thing that
32:40I think some of us thought might happen in 2024 when Keir Starmer got in,
32:44which is that suddenly everyone rolls their sleeves up and is like, OK, fine, we'll come and help.
32:48Point us in the right direction.
32:50Tell us what to do.
32:50There's loads of people I talk to in business, in the private sector who would happily fix stuff if they
32:58were asked.
32:59Yeah, which is actually a great way to do it.
33:01One of my caveats, which is that I think Burnham and his team will feel nervous about looking ahead of
33:10the by-election vote like they are counting their chickens and they're making these kinds of plans for government.
33:17I think they'll worry that any of it will leak and that they will look sort of arrogant in some
33:22way, but they must.
33:25Like, one of the big criticisms of Keir Starmer coming in in 2024 is that they blatantly did not have
33:31a plan.
33:31They do not have a hundred-day plan.
33:33They do not have a thousand-day plan.
33:34And so why not?
33:36I mean, resources are quite scarce and a lot of the people you listed as being very helpful to him
33:40in Greater Manchester might be, you know, perhaps you can send them down to have a bit of a chat
33:44with the cabinet office and some interesting Labour bigwigs.
33:48But beyond the focus of winning the by-election, I completely agree.
33:51Having a plan and building a team, absolutely essential.
33:54What I'm quite interested in is Wes Streeting, who is not polling particularly well with – he's not – he's
34:02actually despised by a lot of Labour MPs and certainly by members of the current cabinet and actually quite a
34:09lot of Labour members who, in a head-to-head, would take Keir Starmer by 18 points over Wes Streeting.
34:16And I wonder whether Burnham has a Michael Gove in 2016 opportunity, which is what Theresa took, which was to
34:23essentially banish him.
34:25Now, Michael Gove was back within a year, actually doing quite a good job of running the environment department.
34:30But you could certainly put Wes back in his box.
34:33And I think a lot of the Labour party would quite like that.
34:37So, Wesley Snipes, while he continues to cause problems talking about Brexit and the East India Trading Company, all kinds
34:44of random stuff like that, I think it's really worth putting him on the subs bench when the time comes.
34:49And he'll find that quite surprising because I suspect he's hoping that he stays in contention and he's an obvious
34:56chancellor or something like that.
34:57And I think that, yes, I expect they all are.
34:59And it's a bit – I do appreciate it's a bit mean to be like, just bin them all.
35:03But I do think this government needs to look and feel different.
35:05I do think there are some really big things that need to happen.
35:09I do – it sounds unbelievably boring, but it's very important that the proper devolution to local authorities, putting power
35:17back in the hands of communities.
35:18There's a brilliant set of stuff that Andy Burnham could do, but it would have to be – it would
35:24be opposed quite heavily in my old patch in Whitehall.
35:28So, he's got to find a way of crashing through these things, but crashing through it quite bravely and boldly.
35:34And I don't know Andy's team in Manchester at all, really, anymore.
35:39But I would hope that he's got a pattern of – he's obviously got a pattern of working that works
35:43for him.
35:44He's got a close team around him.
35:45He's got people he trusts.
35:47There must be a way of being able to translate some of that into SW1.
35:51Yeah, with a lovely Oasis soundtrack over the top.
35:54I mean, it sounds ideal.
35:55What's not to like?
35:56More pies.
35:56More pies. More pies in Whitehall. I'd be very – I'd be very on board with that.
36:00Sometimes clear politics moves really fast and it feels like that we're in another one of those times because two
36:06weeks ago we were talking about a leadership contest.
36:08We were talking about Angela Rayner and West Streeting and the runners and riders.
36:11And it feels like very quickly maybe their time is gone.
36:15Maybe they've blown it already.
36:16Anything can happen exactly as you say.
36:18So much hangs on this by-election in Makerfield.
36:20But I think West Streeting has already blown his chances of becoming leader of the Labour Party.
36:26Because it's just not helpful.
36:27I think the way he has conducted himself, resigning when he did, actually managing to have his resignation leak first
36:33during the King's speech, people just hate that.
36:36It's bad play.
36:36You've sort of done the brutus backstabbing but quite candidly because the Prime Minister's still there.
36:42And actually lots of people have sort of warmed to his tortoise of just like staying completely still and refusing
36:49to move.
36:50He's managed to irritate Labour MPs by reopening this Brexit stuff, which most of them do understand is not about
36:57rejoining or remaining or leave.
36:59But it's about a much bigger question to do with deindustrialisation and how their communities have felt that they've been
37:06left behind for a long, long time.
37:08And I just think he's got the kind of personality and politics bit wrong.
37:13He's speaking to quite a southern audience, which is fine and where lots of Labour 2024 voters probably find themselves
37:22still.
37:23But I don't think, you know, particularly with his own seat, which only has a 600 majority, I just don't
37:30think he survives impact with the real world.
37:33It's interesting, isn't it? Because it's perfectly possible that Wes and Angela have blown it by not acting early enough.
37:39They could have come for Keir Starmer much earlier, months and months ago.
37:44And because Andy Burnham has now, because of the selection of this seat for the by-election,
37:49has now made the contest and the competition and the battle for ideas completely different.
37:54And it's happened like that.
37:55Totally. And actually, people were saying, do you remember Andy Burnham had a crack at taking Keir Starmer down in
38:01the autumn ahead of Labour Party conference?
38:03And then everyone said, Andy's back in his box and he's had to go away and look at his wounds.
38:08And then, you know, this Madison stuff dropped January, February.
38:11The prime minister lost Morgan McSweeney and a cabinet secretary.
38:15Like there was a perfect opportunity to strike then too.
38:17Instead, they've kind of tripped over each other in the very late stages now where, you know, Keir Starmer is
38:23essentially still holding the ball.
38:26No one's managed to get it off him, but they've managed to kind of cleat each other in the face
38:30with their study boots.
38:32And it's just a bit of a disaster.
38:34Thank you for listening to today's episode.
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38:57This podcast is part of the Independent Podcast Network and produced in association with Next Chapter Studios.
39:02The executive producers are Carrie Rose and Olivia Foster and the producer is Sam Durham.
39:07A special mention to our content editor, Maya Anushka, video editor, Vali Raza and videographer, Dan Faber.
39:13Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.
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