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00:00And I do hereby declare that Andy Burnham is duly elected. Thank you.
00:07There Andy Burnham is, between a bin and a fox, you've got to love British politics.
00:12So, welcome to In The Room. We're going to talk a bit about what we think we've learned from the
00:16by-elections last night. Not just Makerfield, which we've been banging on about for weeks
00:21collectively, but also Aberdeen South. There's two quite interesting by-elections happened last
00:26night in two seats where only six weeks ago, the same electorate effectively voted really
00:31differently for reform. So, perhaps the death of two-party politics has been proclaimed a bit too
00:37early. I've got my own in-house guru on all things elections. So, Cleo, where should we start?
00:45So, it's been a stonking, stonking win for Andy Burnham. And I know that everybody wants to get
00:50into the juice of Makerfield. But we're just going to put that juice on hold just for a minute because
00:54I want to talk about a couple of other by-elections first. And I'd like to start with Aberdeen South,
00:59which, you know, being terrible Westminster bubble types, we've perhaps neglected a little bit. But
01:04I think it's really worth discussing.
01:06Do you want to remind us why we have a by-election in Aberdeen South at all?
01:10Yes, that is because Stephen Flynn, who was the SNP Westminster leader, won a seat in Hollywood
01:17last month. Yes, last month, May. And so, you can't hold two seats at once. And so,
01:23that seat was vacated. And the Conservatives threw the kitchen sink at Aberdeen South. And
01:30they have won. And they have won big. It's a 25-point bounce. They took nearly 50% of the
01:36vote, which left the SNP second on 28, Reform third on 8, and Labour just after that on 5%.
01:45So, pretty damaging. I think the things to think about here is the Conservatives have not won
01:51something like this in Scotland in over 50 years. It's really impressive. And there will be a lot
01:56of interest on whether this is part of the big turnaround for the Conservatives, who incidentally
02:01won 2% in Makerfield. They had a 38% turnout. And, you know, sometimes a bit boring to talk
02:07about
02:07this kind of thing. But that makes all the difference. 38% is sort of perfect if you're
02:12running the campaign the Conservatives ran, which was essentially a single issue campaign
02:16about oil and gas in the North Sea. Which is where Aberdeen South gets its prosperity from.
02:22Yes. And the SNP has, until now, which is this space, been very against reopening any oil and
02:29gas fields. So, a bit more aligned with Ed Miliband. Yes, very tricky for Ed Miliband. And also,
02:33just quickly on Stephen Flynn leaving. He's a popular guy. And there were rumours that he would
02:39like to have a run at the leadership of the SNP and become First Minister of Scotland. And even though
02:45the SNP lost that seat, it's quite strengthening for him to say, see, without me, we don't do
02:51nearly as well. And I'm such an excellent campaigner and so on and so forth. Incidentally,
02:56the SNP did win. I don't want to get this wrong, so sorry to our Scottish listeners, but Arbroath
03:02and Broughty Ferry. You don't have to do an accent. Arbroath and Broughty Ferry actually
03:06works. You just say it normally. Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, where they won 41% of the vote.
03:13So, Conservatism reform were tied on 18% and Labour just behind them on 15%. Just quickly
03:20on Scotland, it does feel like this is indicative of a collapse for Labour. Would you agree with
03:27that? Because they're just not on the field.
03:31Yes. And the really interesting thing about Scottish, well, of the many interesting things
03:33about Scottish politics, is that quite often the normal rules that you apply in England
03:38in particular don't apply. So, it's more common in voting patterns to see people switch
03:43between Labour and Conservatives than it is to see people switch between Labour and SNP
03:48or Conservative and SNP, because independence has an issue of such salience. And if you look
03:53at what happened in 2024 and in 2019, in 2019, the Conservatives won really big comparatively
03:59when Jeremy Corbyn was leader. And it's some of those seats that then switched to Labour
04:05in 2024. So, Scottish politics is always interesting in and of itself. And it also tells you something
04:10about the dynamic of what will go on in Westminster next time around. So, both kind of how the two
04:16main parties, fair in Scotland and in Wales, really makes a difference to their ability
04:21to command the confidence of the House of Commons in London. So, this matters in and
04:25of itself. It's a great day for Kemi Badnock, who has personally been up there doing all of
04:29these things. But it's also, just in case you think it doesn't affect you, if you don't
04:33live in Scotland, it does.
04:35Yes. I just want to alert you to a couple of other results, because these are other little
04:39by-elections that were going on in councils all over the country. Reform won a few seats
04:44from the Conservatives. Labour held a couple of seats. The Conservatives held a few seats
04:50and they actually gained some in Essex from reform, which is quite interesting, because
04:55that is obviously set up as the reform stronghold.
04:58So, last night, really not a good night for Nigel Farage?
05:01No. Although, it is worth looking at the national picture. While reform have dropped a little bit
05:06of popularity, they are still overwhelmingly the most popular party at the moment, 29%.
05:1122% for Labour, 21% for the Conservatives. So, they are catching up a little bit. And
05:17then Lib Dem and Greens sort of floating around the early teens. Kemi Badnock must be feeling
05:23amazing. So, she's got these couple of wins in Essex off reform and she's taken Aberdeen
05:28south. It is worth pointing out, though, that the Conservatives still got 2% or something
05:32in Makerfield. And as much as I think this does show a lot of her personal popularity,
05:39she went up there three times to Aberdeen south and she made a big impact. Conversely,
05:44did Keir Starmer end up going to Makerfield in the end? I did not see that well publicised. If he
05:49did,
05:50he might have gone for a night shift to do a little bit of canvassing then. I think her strength
05:56of
05:56personality is really important. But as discussed on the podcast on Tuesday, she still has a brand
06:03problem for the Conservatives as a whole. And that still needs a lot of work. And, you know,
06:08she's only one woman. So, the whole machine needs rethinking. That being said, some of those former
06:15Tories who've defected to reform will be feeling quite sore today. And I suspect they'll be getting
06:19some quite tricky messages from current Conservatives saying, I bet you're feeling a bit sad today.
06:26Our political discourse is so inspiring. Let's go to Makerfield now, having kept everybody on tenterhooks.
06:33So, what happened in Makerfield, Cleo? What do you think about what the result means?
06:38So, just a quick recap on the stats. So, Andy Burnham won nearly 55% of the vote there. I
06:44mean,
06:44we'd been told it was going to be very narrow. But in the end, he really smashed it out of
06:49the park.
06:50Reform got 34%. Restore got just about 7%. The Conservatives got 2%. The Greens and Lib Dems didn't
06:58even get 1% each. So, I think one of the first things to think about here is that it
07:05is a bad night
07:06for Nigel Farage. He was up there personally in Makerfield the whole time. And this is a very, like,
07:12reform. They won every single award in the local elections reform. And it's a very vote-leave
07:17constituency as well. So, this should be his completely natural stomping ground.
07:21Yeah, exactly. And they'll need to be doing some thinking, I imagine, in the reform camp
07:25about rhetoric from the last few days. Did he go a bit too hard on very inflammatory language
07:33after a couple of recent tragedies? But more than anything, they need to really think about
07:39their campaigning machine. So, Labour ran a brilliant campaign partly because they didn't
07:44know about timing. They knew Josh Simons was going to step down and let Andy Burnham have a crack at
07:48things. And, you know, they were ready to go. Reform and everybody else was taken by surprise. But
07:54I'm told that, you know, although lots of people flocked to the constituency to help
08:01reform, they are not very experienced. And that isn't a massive, you know, that is not to do anybody
08:08down. But canvassing does require a bit of skill and it requires quite serious data gathering. And
08:13the first time I remember going, I went with someone incredibly experienced. He took a group of us
08:19and he had a clipboard and he told us, you know, which doors to knock on. We knew what kind
08:24of message
08:24to say. We knew how to handle difficult questions. We knew how to gather data.
08:27And you knew what they'd done before, presumably. So, you've got a whole sort of history that you're
08:31bringing to the doorstep, which obviously reform haven't quite got that.
08:33They have whatever they know from May. So, weeks old information. And, you know,
08:39it is fair to say that people don't always vote the same way in councils versus Westminster elections.
08:45So, they do need to think really carefully, not just from a central office, you know,
08:49how are we running our campaign question, but also how good is our grassroots campaign. And
08:55Andy Burnham's is very, very strong. Is this a ground war, air war, which I never like the
08:59military analogies anyway, but that's the thing, isn't it? They lost the ground war.
09:03Yeah. And also, I wonder whether they will have to review things like,
09:08is Nigel Farage, you know, fronting these things as useful a presence as we think he is? I don't know.
09:16And is he best left to some of the big stunts that, you know, he's been very talented at making
09:22over things like the last two summers and capitalizing on some unfortunate events that
09:28have happened? Arguably, that didn't work this time. You know, they're going to have to do a
09:32lot of rethinking. They're going to have to do a lot of polling and focus grouping to essentially work
09:37out, is this the right strategy? Because, you know, I just told you that they're nearly, they have nearly
09:4230% of the national vote. That is not translating into seats. In the place that it really should.
09:48They've had four by-elections now that they've lost.
09:51Is it also fair to say that it's quite possible that Andy Burnham also won this?
09:56Oh yeah. I mean, he absolutely did. Because I think there's a lot of focus this morning anyway,
10:02that there's a sort of collapse of the right here and that, you know, reform were in some way
10:07undermined by restore and so on. But you put both their votes together,
10:10they can't outflank Andy Burnham here. But what he has been able to do is unite the left.
10:15So he got 55% of the vote. But actually, the Greens had nearly 1,500 fewer votes than they
10:23had
10:23at the 2024 general election in Makerfield. And the Lib Dems had 2,500 fewer votes than they had
10:30at the 2024 general election. Like, that is really effective to be able to say, you know,
10:35it's not just that I can take the fight to Nigel Farage and reform. I can pick off
10:40Zach Polanski and Ed Davey and your party and whatever other splinter groups there are there.
10:46It's a very powerful message from Andy Burnham.
10:47I thought it was really interesting that he actually has lent into saying exactly that twice.
10:52So he said it in his speech last night at the count. And then he said it this morning in
10:58the
10:58rather charming press conference he did at the football ground to say thank you to his campaign team.
11:04The thing that everyone should keep in mind was that Nigel Farage and Reform's message
11:08at the May elections was vote reform, get Starmer out. And without quite saying so,
11:13Andy Burnham's message was vote Burnham, get Starmer out now. And, you know,
11:18in a way they've helped each other to get Starmer out, potentially.
11:22Not good news for the Prime Minister. So we had thought that it was Restore that
11:25was going to cannibalise Reform's vote. But actually, even when you add those two things
11:29together, it doesn't get anywhere near what Andy won.
11:31I know that Nigel Farage has been out on the airwaves saying people who voted Restore have
11:35undermined the Reform vote, but I don't know.
11:38It wouldn't have made any difference.
11:40Exactly. However, when you pitch this nationally, it might make quite a big difference. And again,
11:45the Reform camp have to get back and work out how they're going to challenge this all over the country.
11:51Let's hear what Nigel Farage said.
11:53There's a couple of thousand voters there who would normally have gone out and voted Reform,
11:57that voted Restore. And I would say directly to them, what do you want?
12:01We are the challenger party to the left in this country. And I would urge you to think again.
12:08I really, really would.
12:09The establishment challenger there, I think he's trying to pitch himself as.
12:12With a brass-button, double-breasted jacket in a field of wheat.
12:16No comment. And I think he's not the only person who's been out on the airwaves talking about
12:22Reform's performance. Our own Prime Minister has.
12:25If you look at it in the context of other by-elections, that the tide is turning on reform,
12:30that they can't now win by-elections. They've reached probably the peak of their support and
12:36it's going down. So very good. Congratulations to Andy Burnham. But actually,
12:40tide is turning on reform as well. So this is really important in that respect.
12:45Why might be the question.
12:47I think we also just have to be careful on, you know, I was about to say one by-election
12:51does not swallow mate, but it has been a couple of by-elections on the bounce for reform. I think
12:56what Keir Starmer would be better saying is, you know, reform have lost this fair and square,
13:03Andy Burnham has won it, but there was still a massive danger here and they might get their ducks
13:08in a row in ways I've outlined. And they are still a serious and worrying force if you're
13:15a left-leaning person.
13:17Look, enough on the losers. Let's hear from the winner. What does Andy Burnham have to say
13:22after winning?
13:23A risk, if you like, that we would carry on seeing Britain and the politics of our country
13:30go down a path towards greater darkness and division and ending up somewhere like the United
13:36States of America, where people don't talk to each other in the street if they vote different
13:42ways or in their workplace. We will not let that happen here. We will bring people back together.
13:49I said last night I will be a Member of Parliament for everybody, however they voted.
13:56I will work on a place-first, not a party-first basis, respecting how people voted. I know people
14:02who normally vote for the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, perhaps voted reform in May.
14:08I know they gave me their votes to give me that last chance to do something. And I respect them
14:15for doing that. And I will always then work in the way that shows how much I value what they
14:21did.
14:23And that's the kind of change we need to, a change in our politics to make it work again for
14:29people.
14:30There's a few things to say in response to what Andy has said there. I think both his speech this
14:35morning and his speech last night were really interesting and he hit some quite profound notes.
14:40One of them he has very deliberately said, and I think this is a message to Labour MPs,
14:45that Andy has not just beaten reform, but he's taken the votes. And he said this very earnestly and
14:52you know, in all humility, that he's been trusted with the votes from people who formerly voted
14:56Conservative, who formerly voted Lib Dem, who formerly voted for the Greens.
15:00Yeah. So his message, not very subtly there to Labour MPs who have as the second party in their
15:06seats, all of those parties, is there is one person who can deliver this for you and be trusted.
15:12And by the way, that's me. So he's a very clever man, Andy. I don't think that is an accident
15:17that
15:17he's reinforced that message a couple of times. You can sort of feel in both circumstances how much of a
15:22team
15:23they are. There's like how much they how much they love him and they like him. And he's got like
15:27an ease
15:28and a naturalness and just a way if he looks, he turns, he doesn't stand there formally. I mean,
15:33it probably drives his comms people entirely mad because here I am doing it. He swivels away from
15:39the microphone. He turns around. He's talking to people. He's smiling at them. He's engaging. He looks
15:43extremely natural. And one of the things we don't have very much in British politics is people who have
15:50come into Westminster, having had to be an individual person who's been held to account
15:56by people. So I think what you're seeing in these last couple of days is Andy Burnham, who has been
16:02a mayor. So he's been Mr Manchester for years and years and years and years and years. And he has
16:07a
16:07confidence and an ease at talking at the mic, which you don't often get in our politics that you see
16:14it much more when you have people who become president, who've been governors or been senators or
16:18had to have those big positional power things. So I thought that was really interesting.
16:22Can I add something? You talked a little while ago when really we first started thinking about
16:27Andy Burnham and the eventual scrutiny he will face because, you know, from here on out,
16:32his phone is never going to stop ringing and people will never stop taking pictures of him and so forth.
16:38And I think it's interesting he brought up the United States where I thought, you know,
16:42in a month, you might be having personal phone calls with Donald Trump and making quite sweeping
16:48statements about how people in America don't speak to each other based on which way they voted and so
16:53on. I thought was perhaps a little naive for where you might be in six weeks time. The other thing
16:59is,
17:01is when is he going to start wearing a tie? I think I think he's for people who could not
17:08see the video,
17:09just hear it. He was wearing this sort of white air techs and he looked very smart. He looks like
17:13he maybe coaches the England team or indeed that he's wearing one of the kind of smart casual looks
17:19that the England team are sporting between games at the moment. And, you know, I don't really care
17:25about the gimmicks of rolling up sleeves and wearing ties and so on. But eventually, you know,
17:31is he going to be Andrew in a suit and tie or is he going to stay Andy and, you
17:36know, undo his top
17:37button and be cool? I don't think we're going to see Andy Burnham change very much. I don't think
17:43Andy Burnham is going to come to London and be London-ified and we'll suddenly see him on the
17:47telly in a in a suit and a tie. I think he will carry on being himself partly because that's
17:53what he's
17:53old. But I'm sure we'll see that kind of brand Andy coming into, you know, if he ends up being
17:57the Prime Minister, that's what we'll get to. The other thing about the two speeches, so speech
18:01to the count last night, speech this morning, is that he very cleverly hits some notes which are,
18:07so he's made the point that he can have the votes for all parties and he hits notes in the
18:11Labour Party
18:12which are left and right. So he talks about you right, he makes a kind of snide comment about people
18:18in America not talking to each other. He's very warm about kind of the community and all of those
18:23things. He also is quite robust on migration. So he talks about not being HMO Britain which I heard
18:32as a dig to Angela Rayner and her kind of quite different positioning on the issue of migration.
18:38I felt that was much more Andy Burnham backing up Shabana Mahmood's policies towards migration.
18:43Which we love.
18:44And then he did also talk a lot about, you know, nationalisation and water bills and energy
18:51and transport. And so he's, I think he's quite cleverly so far managing to be all things to all
18:57men. Now whether that, and women, he did also say a lot, speak a lot, very fondly about the strong
19:03Northern women who'd run his campaign. And I obviously liked that too, I thought it was very nice. But he's,
19:08he's not, for all he looks very informal and he's doing this very warm looking back and talking.
19:14He is actually hammering home some really strong points to the constituency that matters to him
19:20now.
19:20Yeah.
19:21Which is Labour MPs.
19:23Yeah, absolutely. He also has shown he's really good at campaigning, which is, it sounds an obvious
19:29thing to say, but let me tell you from my experience of dealing with Conservative MPs and Boris Johnson,
19:37and often, you know, when we were dealing with MPs in the run up to the 2019 general election,
19:42there was lots of frustration with him. People felt he wasn't serious or the parliament,
19:47kind of the parliamentary performer that they wanted. But certainly after the 2019 general election,
19:52he, you know, unequivocally was a brilliant campaigner and communicator. And lots of MPs actually
19:59aren't. And his team have been brilliant. So they had a 60% turnout in Makerfield, which is the
20:05exact sweet spot they will have wanted. Because once you tip over that, you start seeing actually
20:11too many reformed people have turned out and you might be in quite a lot of trouble. And yet,
20:16as you can see for the Conservatives, you don't really want to go too much under, say, 30%.
20:19I think it's, you know, a really important piece of the puzzle here. There'll be lots of Labour MPs
20:24who worry they're going to lose their seats at the next general election. And many probably will,
20:29regardless of Andy Burnham's best efforts. But he is their best shot, at least on a campaigning side
20:34at this stage, the kind of electoral cycle of staying put.
20:40So Andy Burnham has won his seat with a very, very big majority. Does the King of the North now
20:46ride south and gather his MPs together? There's a rumour he has 200 ready to support him. I actually
20:53am not that familiar with kind of Labour Party manoeuvrings on this stuff. Does he have the whip
20:58hand? Can he trigger a leadership contest?
21:00I think the size of the win last night, and the kind of multifaceted nature of it,
21:04and how he's positioning is it, of everybody voted for me, and I'm here for place and people,
21:09not party, has meant that he has all the cards. So what you've seen so far is he's kind of
21:14sitting
21:14back and waiting to see what happens. He doesn't have to move first. He's obviously kind of walking
21:20on water. So what we've seen so far is that he, what we've heard is from the Starmer camp,
21:27repeatedly over the last week, and even this morning, Steve Reid, the housing secretary,
21:31was on the news saying this line too, is that having, you know, absolutely vanquished and
21:36conquered all in Makefield, Andy Burnham's next challenge is to win the Manchester mayoralty for
21:43whoever the Labour candidate is. And it's only when he's done that should he be kind of granted the
21:49special privilege of perhaps standing in a leadership contest, which...
21:54It's getting a bit nuts, this stuff. It's like capital L, Labour's of Hercules,
21:58where it's like, okay, well, on to the next thing, on to the next thing. And like the,
22:01the goalposts keep moving for him, which just seems unfair.
22:05It's like they say that he should, you know, the next step should be that he should personally
22:07slaughter Beveridge's five giants first, before he's allowed to do anything. And I think nothing tells
22:13you more about the mindset that has got this Labour government into trouble than the kind
22:18of madcap thinking that assumes that out of this, the right next step is that Andy Burnham takes a
22:24pause, trawls around the streets of Manchester, tries to get votes for his successor, and then
22:30there's a Labour leadership contest, and then and then and then. Whereas one of the things that Andy
22:35Burnham said this morning in his speech when he was crediting Josh Simons, who stood aside in
22:40order to allow this by-election to happen, was that Josh Simons had seen the May election results,
22:45had seen the votes for reform, had seen what was happening to politics and had been seized by the
22:50urgency. So it's completely incompatible to be like, I've been so seized by the urgency
22:55that Labour needs to change. Andy Burnham again has said, and all the people around him keep saying,
23:01politics has to change, Labour is on its last chance. Even John McDonnell, who was Jeremy Corbyn's
23:07attack dog, is out there this morning saying Labour is on its last chance, that actually the change has
23:13to happen now. So who knows, because you, you know, a week, a day, an hour is a long time
23:20in politics in
23:20this sort of febrile environment. I can't see a situation where we're not going to get a leadership
23:26contest of some sort quite soon. And really the question is, should Labour now crown Andy Burnham,
23:34do you say, the King of the North rides south and picks up another, or should there be a leadership
23:41contest? And if there is a leadership contest, what form should that take? So Harriet Harman was on
23:46the Today programme, you know, Harriet Harman, great Labour grandee, was on the Today programme today
23:51saying it should just be Labour MPs that decide what to do next, that the membership should not get a
23:57vote.
23:57I think it's very tricky because on the one hand, you know, if you're Andy Burnham,
24:02you want to become Prime Minister when you are going to make an absolute smash of it.
24:08It's highly unlikely that, you know, on Monday morning, he's going to have his plans for governing
24:13worked up to such a degree that he's going to be able to get going immediately. So that's an argument
24:18for some sort of contest probably works in everyone's favour. It also is, you know, history has shown as
24:23it's quite dangerous if you have these moments of coronation, and other contenders don't feel like
24:28they've had a chance to at least have a debate. So you've got Wes Streeting, who definitely says he
24:33wants to be part of a contest. Obviously, there's still a question about whether Angela Rayner will
24:37want to. And there is a moment of like, should the Labour Party say to itself, at least amongst
24:42its parliamentarians, with having a bit of a debate about who they pick and choose? Don't know quite
24:48hard, but there's two powerful reasons to say, at the very least, a few weeks of debating amongst
24:53themselves who's the next best Prime Minister is a good idea. I should also add that as things stand
24:58right now, Keir Starmer is saying, if there is a leadership contest, he will participate in it.
25:04I don't anticipate that lasting.
25:07Yes, I mean, it does feel like it might be one of those weekends where people say,
25:11come on, Prime Minister, I think it's time to think quite carefully about this. I just want to alert you
25:16to a couple of dates, Helen, because when we last spoke about this, you said the ideal thing really
25:20would be for a new Prime Minister to come in just before the end of the parliamentary term. So
25:26recess is 16th of July. So there is about a month to get a wiggle on. But Keir Starmer's team
25:34are
25:34pointing to the NATO summit on the 7th of July, and the EU reset summit, as they're calling on the
25:4022nd
25:41of July, as you know, we shouldn't, we shouldn't send a guy in a polo shirt along. And at the
25:46moment,
25:47the Manchester mayoralty is sort of slated for about the 30th of July.
25:52The reason I'm laughing is that I have heard versions of this so many times. There is no good
25:57time. There's not a point. There's no point in the Prime Minister's diary where you're looking ahead
26:02at a six week gap and going like, well, there's not really much going on. This would be a good
26:05time
26:06for a leadership contest. That's being the Prime Minister. And it would be a really good time for
26:09Keir Starmer to have some time off afterwards and get to go to the World Cup. Jolly nice.
26:13One of the things I wanted to just quickly run by, I've got a couple more questions. The first is,
26:19there was some discussion earlier in the week about, you know, Keir Starmer might buy Andy
26:23Burnham off with a cabinet post. I don't think that's going to happen. Do you think there's
26:27a world in which Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister and he offers Keir Starmer a cabinet post?
26:33No. I think that's almost impossible to imagine, Cleo, because he's defined himself so much as
26:40hope and change to then be hope and change. But here's this guy doing this. And it's quite hard
26:47if you've been Prime Minister, like what job do you do? I mean, I know David Cameron came back as
26:51Foreign Secretary, but that was quite a long time afterwards in a very different environment.
26:54He might be happy as Attorney General.
26:55Well, I was thinking about that and I thought that was that was a bit mean. So I didn't say
26:59it,
26:59but I'm glad you went there. The thing that I would, the other thing that I think matters here is
27:06so simple maths of parliamentary majorities, right? If I was Andy Burnham, what I'd be doing
27:11is the following. So Labour's simple majority right now is 157 MPs. So that means when you add up all
27:19of the other parties, the gap between all of them and Labour is 157. So that means that once the
27:26Prime
27:26Minister doesn't have the support of those extra 157 MPs, he doesn't command the confidence of the
27:32House of Commons, which is where the Prime Minister's legitimacy comes from. So if I wanted
27:36to put a lot of pressure on Keir Starmer and I was Andy Burnham, the one thing I would do
27:41is we
27:42know that there needs to be 81 MPs have signed a letter in order for the leadership election to be
27:47triggered. I would find a way of getting 150 of them. Because if you can get 150 of them,
27:53you can definitely get 157 of them. And you couldn't find a better way of just slightly putting
27:58the pressure on. It's not slight. Well, it's my sort of slight menace. Nobody in Labour wants a
28:04general election. Nobody wants to give that ground to the opposition. So go really, really big with
28:10the number of people who actually want there to be a leadership contest. And that also blows all the
28:15other people out of the water. It's good advice, Helen, because the rumour is he has 200.
28:20Well, even better. But 200 is a little tiny bit risky, I would say, because 200 is straight to
28:26the Prime Minister doesn't have the confidence of the House. And if you want a period of time
28:30where you want the Prime Minister to carry on being the Prime Minister while you're sorting
28:33yourself out, 200 is too many. I do want to come back to this timings question. I don't think
28:38that's the next question you're going to ask me. No, go for it, because my last one was going to
28:41be
28:41about Gordon and Denton. Yes, brilliant. I do want to come back to this timings question,
28:45because there's also a lot of chatter that the ideal time for Andy Burnham to take over as Prime
28:50Minister might be the beginning of September. And this slightly makes my skin itch in a former
28:55official, former civil servant sort of way, because there's a big difference between the
28:59kind of pageantry and pomp and circumstance and kind of, yes, here you are, Prime Minister taking over
29:05and, and the actual practical reality. And I am such a proponent of, bear with me, but I'm such
29:14proponent of the Boris Johnson model of taking over just before the summer recess. So you can
29:20appoint all your ministerial team, you can be really clear that you've got basically the summer,
29:26it ruins everyone's summer holidays, for sure. But you've got that period of time when Parliament's
29:30not sitting, when you've got no PMQs, you've got no immediate direct scrutiny, it's a bit of a quieter
29:36time. And that's enough time for you to get your new team up and running, get ministers used to
29:41their new briefs, take probably some quite big strategic decisions about should we do one thing
29:46or the other, you'll need to get the civil service machine to be able to serve you up with those
29:51choices, understanding where you come from. And you've got that kind of really precious six to
29:56eight weeks, she says, adding more weeks to it, where you can then, from September, you're like
30:02governing, governing, governing. Yeah. And with Parliament and all the rest of it. Yeah, with all of the,
30:07you know, bells and whistles, but you're ready, you know what you're doing, and you're able to
30:11actually get stuff done, because not to be, you know, gloomy about all of this stuff, but Andy
30:15Burnham has stood up, and he's promised a massive amount of change. And some really quite complicated
30:20things he was mentioning this morning about what to do about water bills, and whether to totally
30:24remodel the education system. And, I mean, public procurement sounds really boring, it's actually
30:30quite big in terms if you really want to re-industrialise, back British procurement, all of these things,
30:36it takes quite a long time. With the best one in the world, if he started governing in three weeks'
30:41time, he might be able to make those things a reality by the back end of this year. Yeah,
30:46tick-tock, honey. I mean. I know, because there isn't actually that many months and weeks of
30:51productive governing to do before the next election, so he should be in a massive hurry. Having said
30:57that, I don't mean a massive hurry as in start on Monday, because I do think a bit of time
31:02for
31:02everybody to get used to, what does this look like, and how deep does the change need to be,
31:07is a very good idea. Yeah, I mean, just to game this out otherwise, what we're asking of him is
31:12six weeks of local election campaigning, six weeks of by-election campaigning, six weeks of
31:17mayoralty campaigning, give or take six weeks of leadership contest campaigning. Oh, right,
31:22here you are, you know, I have to make a massive speech at your all-party conference, and it's
31:26already October. You know, it's completely unrealistic and not very helpful, and I wonder whether
31:34Labour MPs, Keir Starmer, the rest of them will see the light on what is actually a realistic
31:39thing to do. Well, so, I mean, the other thing I'd say about the Manchester mayoralty is
31:44Manchester's done great, thanks very much, thanks to the kind of civic and collective
31:47leadership that it's had in terms of the priorities for the country. Does it matter the
31:51most for everybody? And, you know, I like Manchester and hope they do get a really good mayor next,
31:56but your hierarchy of problems, where do we need our best efforts? Yeah. Partly because
32:02Manchester's in such a great place, it's probably not there. But with the World Cup
32:05on, will they get Mayor Phil Neville? I don't know if they will, or Gary Neville, or I don't
32:09know. Which the Neville's. Yeah, Neville's. Can I just end on a real sort of what if, I
32:15think, this could be a what if to haunt Keir Starmer this year, which is, what if he had
32:22let Andy Burnham run in Gorton and Denton in February? So, this is, again, a political
32:28pattern that you and I have seen a few times. You have a Prime Minister or sometimes a other
32:33very senior leader who has got a rival, and they're given the opportunity to let the rival
32:40into the tent, which is what Gorton and Denton was. Andy Burnham could have been gratefully,
32:45and he would have been grateful after the humiliation he got at a party conference last year, gratefully
32:50in the tent, back in Parliament, a role in government. I think everything would be really different
32:56for Keir Starmer if he'd sort of had the courage to allow Andy in then, as opposed to what he's
33:02got now, which has pushed the pendulum so much further the other way. So, that's a great
33:07what ifery for someone's PhD in the future. And I think, on the contrary side to that,
33:14is, you know, what could it have meant for Andy Burnham had he lost the Gorton and Denton
33:18by-election, which I think, based on what we're seeing with Makerfield, is extremely unlikely,
33:21but the Greens were just riding higher, and Reform were riding higher at that stage.
33:26I don't think, you know, incidentally, I think it would have been curtains for Keir Starmer
33:30either way. I think something else would have happened, probably by Christmas this year.
33:36But it's just funny how, you know, if you're going to play this sort of 10-dimensional chess,
33:41he has to be pretty good. And I think, unfortunately for Keir Starmer, he is with me in Chess 101,
33:48trying to work out what the hell a porn is. Thanks so much for listening to this bonus episode.
33:54If you'd like to get in touch, you can email us at intheroom at independent.co.uk. See you next
33:59time.
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