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Inside the by-election that could change UK politicsSOURCE: In the Room
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00:00He has said he's going to fight any leadership contest that comes up, by the way, so good luck to
00:05him.
00:05What this means in practice is pretty wild. The really big question is, can Andy beat reform?
00:13Hello, and welcome back to In The Room. Now, before we get started, we'd love it if you
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00:38We've really enjoyed your messages so far. Thank you so much.
00:41Helen, I don't know about you, but from the outside anyway, it feels like things have really
00:45quietened down since a few weeks ago when nearly 100 Labour MPs said that they lost confidence
00:51in the Prime Minister. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, resigned, which sort of happened
00:57over the King's speech in quite a fraught way. And everyone was saying, you know, the
01:02Prime Minister's gone. And we were in this kind of fiery, fury centre of everything being
01:08doom and gloom for Keir Starmer. But it doesn't really feel like that now.
01:11Look, you're right. It feels a bit more like business as usual. So we've got Keir Starmer's
01:15been hosting Zelensky again, and European leaders. So we've had lots of flags outside Downing
01:20Street. And this week, we had the Prime Minister out and about making his usual junior ministerial
01:26level announcements this time at Tech Week.
01:29Burn!
01:31That is the worst thing I can say about a Prime Minister. A junior minister level announcement.
01:36But it does feel very much business as usual. Whether that is in fact true, or whether we're
01:41in the calm before the storm, I think is a different thing. You know, we had the Mandelson
01:45Files last week, as we talked about on last week's pod.
01:47Yeah, the Mandelson Files is a great example. To use a gaming term that I've become familiar
01:52with, the Prime Minister has become an NPC, a non-player character in that, you know, that
01:58should have been fire and fearing everyone across about it and people trying to dislodge
02:03him. But it's like, oh, there's no point anymore, almost. It was quite surprising, actually,
02:08to see just how little reaction there was to the whole thing. In the meantime, it feels
02:13like every single journalist in Britain has gone up to the constituency of Makerfield. And,
02:18you know, Labour slash Andy Burnham really are leading by 10 points there. In the meantime,
02:26I don't know if you saw this, but on Friday evening, Question Time was hosted in Makerfield
02:31and they had all the candidates on for that. And it's like the first time really I've seen
02:35people properly pay attention to a Question Time show because, you know, how many by-elections
02:40do we have where one of the kind of town hall hustings is actually televised on national TV
02:47on the BBC? Is anything going to happen? Because certainly from the outside, I don't know what
02:50you're hearing, you're a bit more plugged into Labour circles than I am. It just feels like
02:55there's this strange Cold War or truce where everyone's sort of downed tools and or downed
03:01weapons anyway. And then is everything just going to hot up after the by-election?
03:06It's an odd and unusual situation, as you say. And yeah, basically quite a lot of big questions
03:12for our country are going to be resolved next Thursday in a by-election in Makerfield, which
03:16none of us had on our bingo card for 2026 either.
03:19Yeah, no pressure, constituents of Makerfield.
03:22So let's have a look at Andy Burnham from that Question Time in Makerfield, answering the
03:26question about whether he's going to run for Labour leader.
03:28This is your moment. Just quickly, because I want to move on. Come on, this is the time.
03:33I'm not somebody who gets ahead of myself. I can't do anything unless I'm lucky enough to
03:39get the support of people here. But if I get your support, I would seek to represent you
03:44at the highest possible level and give this constituency maximum power and influence.
03:48I think West Streeting seems to have launched a leadership contest. So if that is running,
03:53I would seek to join it. But I'd have to persuade members of the Parliament to raise the party
03:57to do this thing.
03:58Cleo, I know you're having a lovely time. You're always having a lovely time. You love
04:01a by-election. You're like a complicated political situation.
04:06What's the most interesting things coming out of the Makerfield focus groups?
04:09I think the thing that can't be underestimated, and it seems clear that the people of Makerfield
04:14are feeling this too, is that this is no ordinary by-election. There is so much pressure on the
04:21decision that the constituents there are deciding. So, you know, this is to decide whether Andy
04:28Burnham will quite possibly become Prime Minister. But it's also a genuine contest between Labour
04:35and reform, which is kind of very important with the next general election in mind, because they'll
04:41be working out tactics and messaging and so forth on how they can beat each other when the time comes.
04:47And particularly for reform, by the way, if they do lose this by-election to Andy Burnham,
04:52although they've become very, very close several times in by-elections recently, they haven't won.
04:58They've never, you know, close but no cigar, as they say. And that is quite a big question.
05:03They're a new party. That means they have not got their ground game. They've not got their machine
05:08quite right because they keep coming in second, despite online and being very popular and despite
05:14lots of newspapers talking them up and finding them very interesting and challenging.
05:19Right. That's not translating to actual voters in an actual place turning up and putting a cross
05:23in the right ballot.
05:24Yeah. And I think one of the things that is really interesting about this by-election in particular
05:28is also the presence of Restore.
05:30So this is really fascinating. If I think about the first time we talked about this by-election
05:34a few weeks ago, we talked a lot about it being a big battle of ideas between reform and the
05:38Labour
05:38Party. We hadn't talked at all about Restore and kind of up on the inside lane or probably
05:43outside lane, as it probably more appropriately is, we've had Restore as a party really coming
05:49in and splitting the reform vote. And that's fascinating.
05:53Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, not to get too caught up in the various candidates
05:58here, but just a quick bit of polling that I think is useful where it feels very gendered
06:05this by-election. So Andy Burnham is 21 points ahead according to servation amongst women versus
06:12Robert Kenyon, who was the reform candidate, who is 15 points ahead with men. But he is also,
06:18you know, as often happens and reform do have a bit of a problem with vetting candidates, although
06:22they did field him in the 2024 general election, by the way, in this seat. He has some unfortunate
06:28comments in the past, which are, you know, basically misogynistic. There's no other way
06:33to put it, including a classic, I'm sexist, sorry, but I am. And reform have done nothing to try and,
06:40you know, the classic move would be to apologise and move on from that. And maybe they think, well,
06:47there's something to lean into here and he sounds very honest and people like that he's more rough
06:51and ready and he's not as polished as Andy Burnham. Who knows? Maybe there's a kind of cunning inside
06:56track here. But on the whole, I would say the better thing to do is to try and draw a
07:01line under
07:01this and not talk about it again. Restore are fielding a woman for their candidate. She's called
07:07Rebecca Shepard. And I think that is kind of an interesting, I mean, they couldn't have known
07:13the sexist comments would have come out. But if you are not minded to vote Labour, and to be clear,
07:20the thing that is overwhelmingly obvious in focus groups that are coming out, which,
07:24you know, in general terms, don't always rely on focus groups for your information. But in a
07:29by-election, actually, that like granular detail is really important.
07:32Because it is the actual people who are actually voting in the actual election.
07:35Correct. It's only a few thousand people that matter here. And, you know, at the last count,
07:3917% are undecided. So there's everything to play for. But the overwhelming message from
07:44almost every subsection is a visceral dislike of Keir Starmer and wanting him gone, which
07:50translate lots of different ways. Therefore, vote Andy Burnham. Therefore, vote reform.
07:55Therefore, vote Restore.
07:57Just on Restore, let's spend a second on Restore, partly because one of our team were like, who
08:02are Restore? And I mean, I slightly catterly said that I thought that they were the first of
08:07what we'll see is many kind of splitter parties from reform. So Rupert Lowe, who's the leader of
08:12Restore, was originally a member of reform. He's gone and set up this other political party,
08:17which has a similar agenda, but not exactly the same. He's been very judgmental of Nigel Farage
08:24accepting large amounts of money. Interestingly enough, and again, probably nobody really could
08:29have predicted that. That donation that Nigel Farage got from the cryptocurrency billionaire
08:35of £5 million has become an issue in this campaign. So Restore are a kind of more, and I say
08:42this very
08:42carefully, but slightly more position themselves as a more ethical, incredible version of reform with a
08:48very similar agenda on migration. And the other thing I found interesting about Restore is that they
08:54have got a massive presence on things like Facebook. So it feels a bit to me like we were
09:00talking about this earlier, about kind of an echo of the Brexit campaign, where everyone's been
09:04looking in one direction, all of this national noise and all this stuff and making predictions about
09:08what it's going to be like. And then very quietly, somebody has actually got an enormous following,
09:12because he has, Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore on Facebook, and he's been doing all sorts of
09:17things, which massively burnishes his credentials with people who are unhappy, particularly on grooming
09:22gangs, all sorts of things. The other thing I think is quite important here is Restore only exists
09:28because Rupert Lowe had a huge falling out with his colleagues at reform, and he left and departed.
09:34And that included things like Zia Yusuf reporting him to the police. I mean, it was pretty,
09:38it was pretty hardcore stuff. And I think this is very important for reform. You know, here we are
09:44yet again with a candidate they perhaps have not vetted properly. And they have, you know, various
09:50councillors who've already left who were elected last month. If they are serious about actually
09:57becoming a party that can govern in the future, they're really going to have to work on their
10:01like interpersonal dynamics, because Nigel Farage does have this habit of just wildly falling out
10:08with people in his own team. And indeed, his own team falling out with each other. You know,
10:14there was that very public departure from Zia Yusuf last year when he then came back. And I think
10:21if Restore are actually able to generate votes out of this, this is a big problem for reform,
10:26because, you know, just like everyone else, they're not necessarily very easy coalition.
10:32Who knows how many others of these groups could spring up as they have fallouts with Reform HQ,
10:38or indeed, how much stronger Restore gets. So, you know, they have to work on their ground game,
10:43they have to work on their campaigning machine and their grassroots. But actually, you have to have
10:48you have to have a decent team of people who are like pointing in the right direction and are loyal
10:53to each other. And it could be a big problem ahead. I think the other problem is that reform have
10:57left a space wide open for Restore by having so many former conservative ministers as part of their
11:03party. They've left the space for we're not like them, anti-establishment wide open. And that's the
11:09space that Reaper Lowe is operating in. The other thing I say to you about the kind of reform and
11:14what you've just explained about immature party dynamics, we'll, of course, see that with the
11:18Greens too. So even though the Greens have been a party that have been around since, you know,
11:23for a very, very long time, this massive influx of new members, new councillors, new people,
11:28that's going to take some shaking down too. So the notion that we've got these very settled
11:32runners and riders for the next election, we are nowhere near that.
11:35Where everyone's polling at the moment, Labour, i.e. Andy Burnham, are about 49%. Then reform are
11:43in about 39%. Restore at 8%. And just for context, the Greens and Lib Dems and Conservatives are around
11:501%, 1%, 2%. So 8% is quite a lot. And that is, you know, guess what, pretty much the
11:56gap between
11:57reform and Labour. I'd love to hear your focus group quote on the £5 million donation.
12:02So this was somebody in a focus group, a 58-year-old man who said, why are people with four
12:09teeth
12:10voting for someone with seven yachts? It just doesn't make any sense. So that donation has
12:15got massive traction that Nigel Farage has taken £5 million and it puts them, it's a really helpful
12:21thing for people who are arguing against reform to be able to point that yet again, it's Nigel Farage
12:27who is the elitist, out of touch. You know, all the arguments that you think reform are making,
12:32they're having turned back against themselves by Restore. So that's an interesting dynamic.
12:36I also think it's interesting that the by-election has, you know, for reform has become more about
12:41Nigel Farage than for the local candidate, who people seem to know. He's a plumber, he was on a
12:47plumbing job when he found out he would be the candidate. He was elected to the council in May
12:53recently and he was their candidate in the 2024 general election. But he's essentially not been
12:59allowed to speak. He did question time on Friday, like I said, but largely it's been about Nigel
13:05Farage. The opposite is true for Andy Burnham, where it's only really him speaking. You know,
13:12in a normal campaign, the party's HQ would be saying to the local candidate, you're doing this on this
13:19day, you're doing that on that day, the chancellor will join you to go to a pub and pull a
13:23pie and
13:23talk about this or the health secretary will visit a new hospital or whatever. That is not happening
13:29on the Labour campaign at all. Andy Burnham and his team are holding it really tightly. I'm hearing
13:34that when the cabinet do go up, they are not to knock on doors with Andy Burnham because they're
13:39all so unpopular. He has to wear baseball caps. He like has a chat with them at HQ and they
13:45have
13:45like a selfie together. But they do not go out door knocking with him. And again,
13:50lots of these Labour MPs are coming, you know, this is interesting to talk about when we come to
13:55Labour leadership speculation, but lots and lots of members of the parliamentary Labour party are going
14:00up to Makerfield. They're doing door knocking themselves. They do not do it with Andy Burnham.
14:04They get a selfie with him. They go up and sort of pay homage to him. And then they are
14:10not involved
14:10in what he's actually trying to do on the ground. And it's, it's a quite an interesting pivot,
14:15I suppose, from here I am being very independent here. It's quite Johnsonian, I would say.
14:21And then eventually he's going to have to be one of these guys as well.
14:26I don't think he's short of offers of help.
14:28No.
14:29I suspect every single ambitious Labour leading person in the country has suddenly found
14:35themselves conveniently in a place they'd not heard of until six weeks ago. Just, you know,
14:39doing a bit of leafleting.
14:40Yes. And but the big question is, what will he do when Keir Starmer wants to go and generously help
14:46Canvass and Leaflet up there? Because, you know, I said this at the beginning, one of the universal
14:53comments that is coming out of these focus groups is a dislike of Keir Starmer.
14:58Yes, I think he might find, Andy might find something distracting for the Prime Minister to do in
15:02Manchester, perhaps.
15:03Stuff some envelopes in the back room.
15:06It's interesting what you say about the kind of energy around the campaign as well.
15:09So this is kind of everybody's fighting for their lives. And there's been quite a lot of
15:12people saying, you know, the Labour activists, you know, proudly boasting about having bleeding
15:17knuckles from shoving leaflets through doors. I mean, the amount of paper that must be being
15:23distributed at Makerfield probably, you know, would make the Green Party win. So no wonder
15:27they're on 1%.
15:27Yeah. And actually, I mean, anyone who has ever been canvassed will know this feeling.
15:33But in a by-election in particular, I mean, you are the pure volume of stuff you're getting
15:37through your letterbox is just so frustrating and tedious. And it's not even the time of year
15:43when you'd want to burn it.
15:44You know, I guess it's barbecue weather coming up again. But yeah, it is. And actually just
15:49having all these journalists up there and everyone's suddenly really paying attention. It's a bit
15:53like a film or something where, you know, you've got all, you know, six weeks of everyone going
15:58completely bananas, wants to know what you think. Have you heard of Keir Starmer? Have you heard of
16:03Count Binface? All the rest of it. And then they're just going to disappear next Friday.
16:08I think we should definitely, I'm so pleased we've got another shout out for the glorious
16:11camp in post. Yeah. So you'd noticed in there, just a little bit more on Keir Starmer, you'd
16:17noticed that in the slightly, I was disparaging about it being a junior minister level announcement
16:23that the prime minister made this week, but you had spotted another with your U-turn radar.
16:27Yes. So in his London tech conference speech this week, he talked about a, let's call it a ban
16:36on social media platforms for under 16s. But inevitably, it's a bit more complicated
16:40than that. It's not quite doing what Australia has done, which where, by the way, it's been
16:45quite successful and it's universally popular, particularly among parents, which I'm sure
16:50you'll relate to. But he had this idea in his speech that the, he said to the tech platforms,
16:58listen, you've got to get yourself, you've got three months to get yourself sorted before
17:03we will bring in, presumably following due process, a blanket rule on banning social media platforms,
17:10damaging social media platforms for young people, which is really to do with controls you could have
17:17on their phones and on their social media accounts to stop them sending or receiving nude images of
17:22themselves or other people.
17:23And that's interesting, isn't it? So there's been lots of chats amongst, you know, the Labour MPs that
17:28Keir Starmer is in legacy mode. Actually, he's really not. So we've seen prime ministers in legacy
17:34mode, and they do slightly the opposite of what Keir Starmer is doing in the moment. So this is quite
17:39a
17:39small, it was quite a small announcement. A prime minister who's genuinely in, hold my beer, I'm going to
17:45absolutely do everything I can. I'm going to run at this wall. I mean, even if it's just on the
17:48basis that
17:49just in case I'm not prime minister, we'll be doing so many big and bold things, I think. I mean,
17:55you know, people have latterly really criticised the fact that one of the things Theresa May did
18:00literally the day before she stepped down as prime minister was create a net zero target. One of the
18:05biggest things that we've had in terms of decisions of the state was done literally with a pen on a
18:12Tuesday afternoon with no parliamentary scrutiny by a prime minister that had a list she was crashing
18:17through in the way that all of us like to crash the list before we finish something. And she did
18:21that. So prime ministers in legacy mode tend to be absolutely hell for leather, knocking out the
18:27park, doing all sorts of really big things. It is interesting to me that that isn't what we're
18:31seeing from Keir Starmer at the moment. He has said he's going to fight any leadership contest that
18:37comes up, by the way. So good luck to him. And just a quick reminder for everybody, for all the
18:42chat about leadership contest, we aren't actually in one. So Andy Burnham said in that question time
18:46clip that Wes Streeting can trigger leadership contest. He actually hasn't, he just resigned.
18:51You know, he, as far as we can tell, he does not have the required 81 MPs to actually get
18:55the ball
18:55rolling. But unfortunately for Wes Streeting, he's already in the kind of brutus stabbing caricature.
19:02So he has technically got the ball rolling, I guess, in like psychologically.
19:07But in a slightly on and off and slightly unhelpful way. So I think there are three things. And the
19:13reason we're doing this deliberately this week rather than next week is it's a bit easier with
19:17a bit more clear water between us and the by-election to have a conversation, which is
19:21going to be harder the closer we get to it. But effectively, if you buy the argument, which
19:26most people in the Labour Party do, which is the really big question is, can Andy beat reform in
19:32Makerfield? And if he does, he ought to be the new Prime Minister, because that is the big question.
19:37The fight for Labour's life at the next election is going to be about Labour versus reform. So Andy ought
19:42to be the
19:42leader, or at least have a chance of doing it. So that question is going to be resolved one way
19:48or
19:48the other in quite a binary way next Thursday. Then it becomes, well, okay, should Andy Burnham
19:53just be crowned as the Labour leader? Or should there be a contest? And this weekend...
19:59And how long should that contest be?
20:00Crucially, yes. And this weekend, there was another question, which is the default. We love the rules.
20:05And we know that the Prime Minister loves the rules. And the Labour Party rules are such that
20:10the current leader is by default on the ballot paper. And Keir Starmer's team were out there
20:15briefing this weekend that he would be standing in an election were there to be a leadership contest.
20:23What this means in practice is pretty wild. So if you think about the times, and God knows as a
20:29country, are we practicing changing prime ministers on the move in recent times? But we've not had a
20:36prime minister putting themselves up for a leadership contest since John Major in 1995. And that was,
20:43you know, to quote one, it was a different time, 1995. It was an extremely short election campaign.
20:50That's when John Major had told everybody to put up or shut up. And the other candidates were members
20:54of the cabinet. And there was a kind of gentleman's agreement over, I think it was like two weeks or
20:59it
20:59was a very, very short period of time. The MPs chose who it was. And there was a sort of
21:04gentlemanly decision not to really do any government business for a couple of weeks in order to get
21:10this thing resolved. And then they'd crack on again. If you have a leadership contest where
21:16the prime minister themselves is standing for election to the members of the Labour Party,
21:22you've got a whole host of really complicated questions about, well, can the prime minister
21:28suddenly start making massive policy announcements? Because are they doing that to try to win the
21:33hearts and minds of the Labour Party? And as taxpayers, resources and government business being
21:38distracted into this internal party fight, which is not proper, and it will be fiendishly,
21:45I mean, all the times I feel very sorry for the civil service, how on earth you manage a leadership
21:51contest where you potentially have, okay, Wes Streeting's resigned, he's not in the government,
21:56anybody who wants to stand presumably has to also resign and not be in the government. But the guy
22:02who's leading the government is also on the ballot paper, and he's not resigned, he's still there.
22:07And potentially, this could drag on for months, theoretically, over the summer, of the Labour
22:13Party sort of eating itself in public. Yes, and I know a thing or two about a political party
22:18technically governing and eating itself at the same time. I've seen this too, that there's a discussion
22:23about should Keir Starmer essentially stay in position, and then they elect a new leader at the
22:29party conference in October, which we've discussed this before, you do not want to be airing your dirty
22:36laundry all summer. But also, hostilities has essentially reopened between Iran and Israel this week.
22:42Again, the autumn that is coming and the winter that is coming is not good for us. And we need
22:49the summer for whoever is in power to really prepare as well as they possibly can. And fighting a
22:54leadership contest is not conducive to that. And also, by the way, just having a bit of a break,
22:58because this is an oppressive job. The Prime Minister is allowed a bit of a holiday. Or I've seen the
23:03kind
23:03of contrary, which is what we discussed a couple of weeks ago, which was, you could have a situation where
23:08Andy Burnham, step one, wins the by-election, which is no easy feat. And then he could theoretically be
23:16Prime Minister a few days after that, because if he has enough Labour MPs behind him and the Prime
23:22Minister doesn't, then that's just decided. If the Parliamentary Labour Party essentially
23:26unanimously decide to have Andy Burnham straight in position, why not? But I can see if you'll say the
23:33civil service or indeed the country. You can see my little panicked face. Because I hope he's put
23:40some thought, his team put some thought into what the future might hold. But he'll be so anxious of
23:47seeming like he's sort of committing hubris. He won't want to be seeing or doing, measuring the
23:52curtains, as they say. Even a month would make a difference. There is a worst of all worlds here,
23:56which is that you have a new Prime Minister, who effectively has not had the time or the space
24:03or the energy to not repeat exactly the same mistakes that were made in 2024, when Kirsten became
24:11Prime Minister. So if you like... Which is arriving with that plan. So why are we here? Why are we
24:16here?
24:17We're here partly because for lots and lots of different reasons, the Labour Party itself now
24:22recognises that it didn't really have a plan to govern in 2024, didn't really know what it's there
24:28for, hasn't actually been able to make the big changes that have persuaded its electorate or even
24:32its membership, like what the point of it is and what it's here for. The amount of really boring,
24:38practical things that need to be decided before you can become Prime Minister is... I've written these
24:43lists before, they're quite long. Yeah. And just for all of us, you don't want a Prime Minister
24:49turning up extremely exhausted after a very contested by-election campaign, not having had
24:57enough time to think about what team he wants, what his agenda for government is, who he's going
25:02to put where, what instructions he's going to give them. All of these things are not the work of half
25:07an hour. It needs, at kind of best, a few weeks to settle these things. And if you think about
25:13transitions of power that have worked really well, and this is a bit me talking my own book,
25:17obviously. But if you think about Boris Johnson, who came in, just squeaked in before recess in
25:222019, I think it was literally the day before parliamentary recess that he took over, that
25:28I'd been working with him and his team for weeks before then, quite, so we'd done access talks with
25:34the two shortlisted candidates of the, of the leadership contest with Theresa May's permission.
25:39Mark Sedler and I had spoken to Jeremy Hunt, we'd spoken to Boris Johnson, and then it became
25:43clear that Boris Johnson had won. We did a really intensive piece of work with him and
25:48his team to get ready for like, okay, sometimes really, where are you going to live? Who's
25:53living with you? Which at that point wasn't entirely a straightforward question. And then
25:59what are you doing with all these different jobs? What are the three things you want to
26:02achieve? How are we going to structure these things?
26:03And we're leaving the European Union on the 31st of October at that stage.
26:06Oh yeah, there was that. It's a tiny administrative matter of leaving the European Union.
26:10But it's not dissimilar. It's like, okay, of all these stressful things to be happening in
26:14your life, moving house, famously stressful.
26:16Famously.
26:17That's got to happen. You've just come off the back of this by-election, as you say.
26:21You've got a massive to-do list of just all the things that you can expect to happen.
26:25You've got to move your family down here from Manchester, where they're presumably
26:27quite happy. And you're now Prime Minister and there are loads of like big and scary
26:32things. And you sort of mentally have to change tack. He's gone from, he would go from by-election
26:38in Makerfield to potentially like PMQs within four days or something. I mean, it is quite bananas.
26:45It is quite bananas. But if we're not careful, there is a possibility that you end up in that
26:49sort of situation. And being Prime Minister is a job where there are other jobs like it,
26:54but not very many, that you have to take an extraordinary amount of decisions every day.
27:00Like, so it's basically, well, this is the theory, but whether everybody practices exactly
27:03like this, we shall see. Has he got an intellectual framework, a setup, a system, a structure that's
27:10going to enable him to actually turn some of the Manchesterism ideas into the UK, governing
27:16of the UK?
27:17So what would be, I mean, I keep hearing, and I have some sympathy for this, that people
27:22are quite keen to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And that by, by getting rid of
27:26Keir Starmer and replacing him with Andy Burnham, you're not, you're not necessarily getting
27:32a better leader. I don't know if that's fair or not, or, or a necessary, you know, what
27:36is Manchesterism? There's lots of this discussion going on, but let's just say, you know, I think
27:40the, I think the stable doors open and the horses bolted personally on Keir Starmer. I think
27:46it's not if, it's, it's when. From, you know, with your old hat on back in the Cabinet
27:52office, if you were in that job and you were in charge of potentially welcoming a new Prime
27:57Minister, what would be the kind of perfect timeline for you?
28:00So I think it would be better all round if it would be possible to have a new Prime Minister
28:04in place just before the summer recess. And then you'd have a new Prime Minister in place,
28:08you'd have the whole of the summer without Parliament, which does, I mean, quite rightly,
28:12by the way, creates a lot of work for ministers because you've got to account to Parliament
28:15and answer questions and all that stuff. So you have a little bit of breathing space
28:18where those kind of six weeks before Parliament comes back again in the autumn, you can use
28:23to make sure your ministers have really understood their jobs, they've, you've got a very clear,
28:27very intense period of work, good luck everyone's summer holidays, where you can get ready to
28:32basically start doing things differently in September. Because one of the things that you
28:37need to start thinking about, and there hasn't been enough thinking about this, is like,
28:41stop, stop putting one foot in front of the other from left to right, start thinking
28:44from right to left. So, and this is the mindset, by the way, that gets you to, it's already too
28:49late. But if you think about, we had a general election in July 2024, right, so the parliamentary
28:54term runs out in July 2029, that's five years. Well, practically speaking, the last six months
29:00of a Parliament are an election campaign. We don't, by the way, have a fixed term Parliament
29:04Act anymore. So the election can be called at any, at any point. And it might be that politically,
29:09you decide to do a bit sooner. So the maximum amount of time you have is five years, but
29:14not six months off that. So that takes you to kind of Christmas 2028 is the last time
29:19you can really make any meaningful decisions, which might make a difference to the election.
29:22So it's two and a half years from now, basically.
29:24Yeah. And then if you think, well, what's, people have to feel that things are different
29:27and stuff has changed, not just be told that hope is coming, particularly after what we've
29:31just been through. So if you, even with the best will in the world, it takes, let's say,
29:36a year, maybe, and that's if you're really fast, for you to change something, like make a law
29:42different, put something in place, and for people to actually see it, that takes you back to 2027.
29:47Oh, hang on a second. That's the end of this year. So you kind of need to know and have
29:52decided
29:53what you want to do and be actually doing the thing this autumn, in order to make a difference
29:58to the outcome of the next election.
30:00Which contrasts quite sharply with telling big tech, you've got three months before I'm going
30:04to really come round and wag my finger at you.
30:07How about just today? And that's the other thing that I think that the, like we've spent
30:11a lot of time and obviously the Labour Party, all political parties love to spend a lot of
30:15time on their own internal machinations and who's up and who's down and all of those things.
30:19The other thing that's happened in recent weeks is that the former Prime Minister, Labour's
30:24most successful Prime Minister, our friend Tony Blair.
30:27I was about to say, your diagnosis sounds similar to Sir Tony.
30:30Well, I mean, if only it's very flattering to suggest Sir Cleo, but Tony Blair published
30:35an essay by which he, where he was focusing on not just kind of all of this, you know,
30:40who's up and who's down and who should be the Prime Minister, but the radical notion that
30:43you should care about what, like not just, not just who, but what is the Labour Party here
30:48for? What are the big challenges of our age? And look, you don't have to, obviously,
30:51you don't have to agree with Tony Blair. The Labour Party loves to disagree with Tony Blair
30:54because they love nothing more than knocking their most successful leader.
30:58If you look at the response that you got from both, like three days later, though, it was
31:02really disappointing. It didn't engage with any of the substance. It tried to make out
31:07that Tony Blair doesn't really understand government and that Keir Starmer does have a superior
31:11understanding of government, which I think even Keir Starmer's friends would sink as a bit
31:15of a push. Not least is actually because one of the things that Tony Blair has done after
31:18power in the UK is spend an awful lot of time thinking about advising other governments
31:24and the guy, you can criticise him for a lot of things, but not understanding power
31:28is not one of them.
31:29The Tony Blair Institute is very reputable. I mean, so he had a 10-point plan in there
31:33and it was things like radical reform and deregulation, the planning system, prioritise cheaper energy
31:39over net zero, fundamental reform of welfare. And Keir Starmer said, I'll be blunt, it is simply
31:45not a credible depiction of how government works. Government is not a to-do list. You cannot
31:51just tick off the issues one by one, which is exactly, the process must be followed.
31:57But actually, government is a to-do list. I don't want to be that guy, but government
32:01is a to-do list. It's like, what am I doing today? And then can I tick off these issues
32:05one by one? I mean, you can't solve all the problems of the known universe by ticking
32:09off the issues, but you sure as hell can achieve absolutely nothing if you don't tick anything
32:12off.
32:13Yeah, it was really surprising. And then Tony Blair was very quick to go out on the
32:19Today programme and say, I'm not saying a change of leader is important. But it's actually,
32:23it is worse than that, because I think, I've picked this up myself, actually, people don't
32:29feel like things are going well. And there are some people who say, probably rightly, there's
32:34no point getting rid of Keir Starmer because things won't change. And there are people who
32:37say, we've just got to get rid of him because how could it be worse, perhaps? But every
32:44single member of the cabinet of the Labour Party should be reading that essay and should
32:49be thinking really carefully.
32:50And disagreeing with it on the terms of which he's set out. So actually, the most disappointing
32:54response I think I saw was that West Streeting very quickly afterwards. I mean, to the extent
32:58that you're like, did you read all 5,000 words?
33:00He's in leadership mode, honey.
33:01He's in leadership mode. Well, so in which case, he really, he really doubled down on that
33:05because his response was mainly about the Iraq war. And you think, who were you talking
33:09to? It wasn't about engaging with any of the substance of these quite interesting and thought
33:13provoking ideas about how our whole country, economy, growth might be better, the things
33:18that definitely need to fix and the things that don't, which you can definitely have an
33:20argument about. Instead of which, he pivoted to, let's have another crack at Tony Blair for
33:25the Iraq war. And by the way, I was treating didn't support the Iraq war in 2003. It's like,
33:30I think he was still at school.
33:31Yeah.
33:32I mean, I'm sure it made a massive difference.
33:34But it also sits weirdly alongside, you know, West Streeting's message with Peter
33:38Manderson we talked about last week. It's just an uncomfortable situation where I think
33:44so many members of the parliamentary Labour Party will disagree with what Tony Blair said
33:51in that essay, not least because it's just not where they are on things. It's like Pat
33:55McFadden's text to Manderson again, where he's talking about taxing people to spend on welfare
34:01and things like that. Like there, a lot of the decisions in the last two years are really where
34:06the heart of some of the, particularly the new Labour intake are. And they sit so, you know,
34:12Tony Blair is a bogeyman for them. And one of the things I thought was so interesting is how many
34:18conservatives I know who read the essay and were like, yes, this is great. Let's just make this
34:23those two things may be related. But I thought the one person who did, in fact, as you might
34:31expect, handle this slightly more elegantly was Andy Burnham himself, who didn't entirely
34:37demolish the list of things because actually the list of things are interesting and thought
34:40provoking, but did say that he felt that the argument didn't go to what was on the doorsteps
34:46of Makefield, which is about cost of living. Actually, the kind of the meta thing for the
34:51Tony Blair essay is that the way in which we are governing our country, the decisions we're
34:55taking, all of this stuff is not working for people. But being the Tony Blair Institute,
35:00it's not anchored enough in poverty and opportunity and all of the things that actually if Tony Blair
35:07was a real life politician these days, he would be talking much more about. So Andy didn't close
35:12the door to doing all of these things or listening. He just was very hard on. This is not why
35:17I'm
35:17hearing people really care about right now. Yeah. And actually, one of the things I thought
35:20he did very well was, because this is also what I think so, you know, so surprising, we agree with
35:28ourselves yet again. But he linked it, Andy Burnham linked it back to the 2008 crash and how that has
35:34affected living standards ever since. And, you know, this is we're about to come up to the 10 year
35:39anniversary of Brexit. And this is the thing I always talk about, which is, you know, the Brexit
35:43vote is not a cause. As much as you may think so, it's not a cause of our problems. It
35:49is a reaction
35:51to what has happened to people's living standards and our public services since the 2008 crash. And
35:57Andy Burnham, Labour candidate in Makerfield was bang on the money with that one.
36:01In the same way, the 2008 crash wasn't a kind of abstract incident like, you know, a great plague or
36:07something. We've had one of those. It was, it was showing people the reality of the world as it had
36:15got. So that actually the kind of fundamental bait and inequality that there was in the way that the
36:21finance system was working. That's what 2008 is. It's not, it's not kind of a random incident that
36:26happened. It's another thing, which is a symptom. And I mean, it is a cause of some of the things
36:30that
36:30follow. But also, it's a symptom of how far away from the kind of more benign, regulated version of
36:36post-war consensus capitalism, including in the States with philanthropy and all these things
36:41that we used to have that we don't have anymore. And we've been kind of flailing about collectively
36:45ever since.
36:46Which is also, by the way, to link this back to Nigel Farage, what he should be careful of,
36:50you know, the focus group quote, 47 yards, TLDR, is quite resonant in that, you know, he worked in the
37:00city. And this crypto stuff for lots of people feels like another vague sort of city money,
37:08financial markets thing, which doesn't feel quite fair to everybody. And I think Farage,
37:13who's always been able to run as a slightly Robin Hood people's champion on this stuff,
37:18could get outflanked by under Burnham. But we will know for sure next week when the votes in the
37:25by-election come out. And just a reminder, Nigel Farage is not actually standing as the candidate.
37:29There is a reform candidate, but he's just the mouthpiece, as per.
37:33And there is always a possibility that Andy Burnham doesn't win. So most of this conversation,
37:38we've been assuming...
37:38Yes, well, let's game that out, shall we?
37:39So we've been assuming that Andy Burnham will win. If he doesn't win, I think you've got,
37:46all bets are off in terms of the Labour leadership. Because it's unlikely, obviously,
37:50that Andy Burnham can then participate. He's not going to do a chicken run to another seat and
37:55have another go. I think that is impossible for him to do. So he'll go back to being the
38:00Manchester mayor and see what happens next. I don't think West Streeting, from the sounds of
38:05things, has got anything like the numbers to launch an attack. And whether even if he can launch an
38:11attack, is he going to successfully become the new leader and prime minister? Really doubt it.
38:16Yeah.
38:16So back into kind of Angela Rayner territory, maybe she will throw a hat in the ring.
38:20And by talking her up, we've ruined Shabana Mahmood's chances.
38:24Anybody that we like, there's no chance of that. And so it's actually much more likely
38:29that we might be on reset number, I don't know what we'd be on now, seven?
38:34Nice biblical magic number in seven. So we might be on to Keir Starmer staying put.
38:40And there we go. That's our summer.
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39:27Thanks for listening and see you next week.
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