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00:00on monday andy burnham stood in the what was the museum called it's the people's history museum
00:05the people's history museum but you couldn't see that from the backdrop actually because
00:08you could feel it in your heart he was just standing in front of a barn door um but i
00:12found
00:12that very moving in in itself obviously so he scrambled the nation's journalists up from
00:19london euston only to not take any questions for them they're a bit sore about that they are a bit
00:23sore and we'll be talking about what he needs to answer going forward later on but he essentially
00:29unveiled his vision i was a very vibes based vision for britain and its economy and his growth plan
00:37and really what he plans to do when he has the keys to number 10 which we are expecting
00:42assuming there are no challenges in a leadership contest to happen on the 17th of july he's going
00:47to need two sets of keys though cleo because it's not just number 10 in london it's going to be
00:51a
00:51number 10 in the north yes very excited to know what you make of that with your old deputy cabinet
00:56secretary hat on because um i imagine that it's going to be logistically challenging very nice
01:02very exciting vision but i think that's the crux of what we want to get to today is you know
01:07he has
01:08a folksy charm he's a great way of communicating he does say what a lot of us are already thinking
01:13and
01:13to be honest many prime ministers have been articulating for quite some time
01:16but it will apple pie hit with reality and be crushed into crumbs we don't need to bring the
01:24pie into it the people's pie minister let's listen to a little bit of what he had to say
01:30i'll get this number 10 north will be the nerve center of a rewired britain
01:42i really hope that he starts every single announcement with now get this yeah yeah i like
01:48it that's like right here you go you're going to want to clip this as we just did and uh
01:53and and
01:54with it now get this but also are you ready for it now get this here's something that's really going
01:58to hit home and then for me anyway a slight word salad number 10 north is going to rewire britain
02:05okay okay you know you're going to put that in latin on a motto on the on the front door
02:11i i don't
02:12think that is you know i'm going to solve your problems bill clinton i feel your pain but to be
02:17discussed it was a bumper day for speeches though because to try and pip andy burnham to the post
02:23kemi badenock had five key points that she wanted to challenge him on cut the cost of energy cut
02:29welfare bill cut regulation cut tax and champion business let's have a little listen to kemi's speech
02:35mr burnham is clearly desperate to be in charge but prime minister is not a ceremonial position
02:42he doesn't have a plan beyond telling mayors to go and sort it out this is not good enough there
02:49is
02:49a country to govern devolved mayors are not going to fund the defense investment plan he needs to come
02:55to parliament tell us what he wants to do and face some questions from mps the people elected to hold
03:02the government to account giving speeches in manchester and not taking any questions is
03:07simply not good enough that's a lot of flags that kemi took a backdrop she's standing behind an awful
03:13lot of union jacks there for union jacks and then i i noticed they've got a slogan on their um
03:18lectern
03:19now which is stronger economy stronger britain snappy i did think i didn't know what you thought about
03:25kemi's speech yesterday i think it's an odd kind of power dynamics move if you're the leader of the
03:30opposition and you are actually the leader of the opposition should you really be dignifying somebody
03:35who's not even at the moment in the context to be the leader of the labour party by trying to
03:40go out and preempt their speech it was an odd choice i think yeah i think i think it's called
03:45being too
03:45clever by half very cute technical term yes it's very cute to get out there and what she ended up
03:52with doing we're doing really was delaying andy burnham's speech by about half an hour whilst she did a
03:5815 minute speech and then took half an hour of questions um where she flew quite close to the
04:02wind on a couple of things she implied that we'd already had a mayor as prime minister and look how
04:09that worked out dot dot dot i found that a really really bewildering i couldn't exactly see that we
04:15already tried having a mayor to be prime minister and that didn't go very well for us it's like hang
04:20on a second wasn't that that was you guys yeah yeah i thought that was um well unfortunately that is
04:26speaking off the you know off the cuff and that's what she came up with i don't know whether she
04:31knows something we don't know it is possible just a little side note here that she's looked at the
04:35makeup of uh the 2024 tory vote or indeed members of the conservative party now and maybe that is not
04:43the boris johnson boosterism that there used to be maybe we're we're much closer to the kind of classic
04:49cameron member now right and so she thinks the red wall vote is is basically gone well they barely
04:55fought makerfield did they they put all their effort into aberdeen south and so there's an
04:59there's an argument for we just know all those people we know the kind of boris johnson fans have
05:04left for reform or labor or labor and we should be trying to pick off kind of classic home counties
05:11conservatives and and lib dems which is quite interesting because that is essentially the
05:17opposite of what andy burnham seems to be suggesting he's really trying to kind of suck
05:22away from the south and um consolidate his kingdom in the north just before we get into it
05:28the appropriation of the north to mean just manchester as someone from yorkshire i find troubling
05:34i find it elaborate i find it slightly painful it's the wrong side of the pennines yes i i definitely
05:40think that do you remember how everybody got tired of keir starmer talking about how his father
05:44was a toolmaker i remember that maybe this this could be this could just be me speaking but i
05:51wonder whether andy burnham might want to change the tune on manchester manchesterism quite soon i
05:58don't think you're going to be in luck there does he speak for everyone and and and as our northern
06:02correspondent is there a rivalry in the north where people will think oh well it's great that
06:07manchester are getting the number 10 of the north but what about us did you just ask me is there
06:11a rivalry in the north yes cleo people from yorkshire and people from lancashire have you
06:16know been at odds for quite some time but has he got a is there genuinely a danger in him
06:20kind of
06:21bigging up manchester so much and seeming to uh put a lot of power and investment into manchester here
06:27and is he in danger of neglecting say the northeast i think it's a really interesting question it's
06:33definitely going to be a challenge for him so what we've seen him do totally predictably and you
06:38know fair enough is he's anchored hugely heavily in manchester he's anchored hugely heavily in
06:44makerfield we heard in the speech yesterday him yet again talking about the makerfield test
06:48so if it doesn't work in makerfield he doesn't want to do it um that is not manchester and makerfield
06:55doth not make the world and i think there is a risk that both people genuinely feel alienated because
07:01there's an awful lot of the country that's not a big city there's an awful lot of country that's not
07:05in that geography there's an awful lot of people who are going to vote for him or not who will
07:10need
07:10to understand he is actually going to be the prime minister for the united kingdom and that's not not
07:15just the north of england not just england but scotland wales northern ireland is a different sort
07:21of mindset and i think we probably will see some adjustment over time because it will definitely
07:26start to grate on people yeah i mean do you think he's in danger of becoming the least powerful prime
07:33minister in british history by by ceding so much control well so i think let's talk about this
07:37which is devolution what he effectively stood up and said in that audience yesterday is that he
07:42deliberately wants to be the least powerful prime minister so after the after the 10-year reign of
07:47burnham then what he will definitely have done is made the job of the prime minister much less
07:53powerful because real decision making will have been devolved to and he listed off pretty much every
07:58single aspect of government outside of white hall so whether that's to the devolved administrations
08:05and they will be areas would have pricked up in some hearing some of this yesterday he talked about
08:09regional government he talked about mayors he talked about local government genuinely a massive
08:14from the sounds of it shift in balance of power obviously he's got his own views on devolution he's
08:20been a metro mayor and he had in the front row was made up of mayors he'd managed to get
08:24them all
08:25there and people are feverishly reading a book he wrote with steve rotherham i've read that um i've
08:31read the original book at the time actually before it was before it was called yeah the first one of
08:36the few unsigned copies um and he talks about uh post post second world war germany and how the power
08:43is not consolidated all in berlin or frankfurt or wherever and i think that's very interesting one of
08:48the big questions i have for burnham i suppose is is he absolutely certain there is so much public
08:54support behind devolution and i would point to a couple of things here my old mucker dominic
09:01cummings his first referendum he ever won was the no to the northeast assembly campaign in 2006 but
09:09there was a big argument for um you know we don't want to split into different parliaments and so on
09:14and then since then we have had 55 in the last 25 years we've had 55 referendums on elected mayors
09:2238 of those have not been successful is there this is there this big appetite there has always been
09:30a big feeling of regret that there is a is a senate in some parts of the country like the
09:36wells is quite split on the question actually so i'm i'm curious to know whether he's that that
09:43confident that this amount of devolution is that popular amongst the public and i would also just
09:49quietly say having dealt with some mayors and some council leaders and indeed the devolved
09:57administrations i've often despaired at the kind of caliber of politician and administrator
10:03in westminster and whitehall i don't think that these are better run organizations either so giving
10:12them more power and more money i'm not sure is the answer to to being better governed and getting
10:18better services in these areas well let's take these one at a time so i don't think he's doing
10:24it because he thinks it's popular so i don't think that the motivation to stand up and say i'm going
10:30to
10:30do all of this devolution is because he thinks this is an absolute surefire vote winner you know what
10:35people love constitutional messing about when do we want it at some point in the future no one really
10:42actually viscerally cares see your point about who can be bothered to vote for an elected mayor
10:46like why would i i think he's doing it because he thinks that the quality of governing will be better
10:52so it's not about the kind of means it's about the end but to my point is the quality of
10:57governing
10:57better you know when it actually boils down to the individuals involved and and so forth it's going
11:02to be different i think there are some absolutely excellent people actually in my experience it's
11:06a slightly classic uh you know sw1 snobbery of thinking that actually you know the problem is no
11:13one's quite as good as we are in my experience that most of the real governing that people cares about
11:18care
11:19about which is like your bins being collected that sort of thing stuff that really actually matters
11:23to your day-to-day life is done by local government there are some absolutely excellent people who work
11:28in local authorities as both on the official and on the um political side there will have to be more
11:34of them the thing that really worries me actually about kind of this idea of devolution is that one of
11:41the things that broadly speaking keeps national government on the straight and narrow is the
11:44amount of scrutiny of national government so absolutely if you're a cabinet minister you can expect
11:50what you say in any context to be entirely crawled all over and there's people whose professional
11:54life is trying to sort of make you look stupid thank you very much our nation's journalists like
11:59it's it's it's an important thing one of the reasons i think for our structural decline is the uh
12:06demolition of local journalism and local newspapers so it used to be the case that local politicians and
12:12local people were all held to account by those newspapers in a local area and some people who'd be
12:18really reporting on council meetings would be holding local politicians feature the fire on what
12:25they were doing and the fact that that has all but disappeared all but disappeared from our kind of
12:29consciousness and our democracy is really problematic the second thing i say is that the place that you
12:34have to balance real conflicting interests like shall we close that road should we open this school
12:39should we do we need another health center is this the right place to put this new factory
12:44is at a local level so there is a really strong argument that you would make better joined up
12:51decision making in places than you do in whitehall where you don't have to manage those competing
12:56tensions so i think there is a believable case that our governing would be better that you get more
13:03sensible decisions in places that made sense for the places themselves if you had more power and if you
13:10look across our kind of long economic history it just has been true that places have been more
13:16prosperous if they've been able to make decisions themselves and the massive sucking of concentration
13:21of power and money to the southeast of england and to london in particular has coincided with all
13:27of the actual power power coming to london in the southeast of england so it's not it's not an
13:32unreasonable case to make listeners might remember that uh parts of the treasury already been moving to
13:37darlington a few years ago that was actually under rishi sunak the conservatives you know have also
13:42been trotting out this language for quite a long time george olsen was talking about the northern
13:45powerhouse boris johnson was talking about leveling up rishi moved the treasury to darlington but you
13:51know with your old both housing and cabin office hats on stack them up how does this actually work in
14:01practice you know we are we are already halfway through an election cycle actually so we've got an
14:06election in two and a half three years time what will be happening in whitehall are they going to
14:11be thinking how do we get this done can it be done are there even any existing plans that could
14:16be
14:16dusted off to try and get this number 10 of the north going asap well i mean yes okay people
14:22have
14:23talked about this before i don't think anyone has believed it in quite the way that andy burnham
14:26really really believes it so it's in his bones basically and that's partly because he spent nine years
14:32as the mayor of manchester having these arguments but also because he's seen in practice how it
14:36works and he's been frustrated from where he sits about he knows that he would have been able to
14:41take better decisions and do more and the more power he's had the better it's been for manchester
14:45he can see it in practice so i can't think of the last time we've had a prime minister who
14:49genuinely
14:51like viscerally feels these things so i think that's going to be different the real kind of rubber
14:56hits the road stuff is the devolution of money so it's about are you prepared to give actual real life
15:04money and actual real life choices to these people and are you happy that they're going to do things
15:09that you don't like because you and i've both been in situations where like this stuff is great in
15:14theory and then in practice you get this unbelievable kind of pushback particularly on the political side
15:21where if you've made you know the conservators had this with andy burnham in manchester and you know
15:28labor had this with boris johnson a bit that you have kind of hang on a second you're making the
15:32other guy
15:33look successful like why are we doing this again why are we doing this again so there's a there is
15:38there are some real political downsides to giving away power i mean even to your own side sometimes
15:44because you they're not ever grateful no one says no one says thank you and that's enough like they
15:50always say uh it's not enough despite this rotten government i've been able to do these things but
15:56i could do so much more if you gave me more power so this will become a reality and this
16:01is i think
16:01where all the speculation comes about who is going to be andy burnham's chancellor why is i mean it's
16:06always an interesting question but it's a really really particularly pertinent one now because you
16:11have to believe for what andy burnham said to be true yesterday about real devolution you have to
16:17believe there's a chancellor who also is going to do that and they're going to devolve two massive
16:22things one actual decisions about spending so let people in a place decide whether to back this bit of
16:30railway or that road or this bit of infrastructure and then even more frightening for my former treasury
16:36colleagues fiscal devolution our old friend and that's not about spending that's about raising money
16:42what i want to ask you about next then and this i think really is in your good old wheelhouse
16:47the
16:48idea of these white hall turf wars so andy burnham lamented at length that how he's had to fight the
16:55civil service and white hall for money and power and he's been part of these scraps for years and
17:00the big big problem is these departments just fight with each other and if they could all just agree
17:05just get on oh just anyone friends and and like if we can if he and he can stand in
17:10the center of a
17:11peace circle where they're all holding hands things will just be better helen people have talked
17:17about this for such a long time but you've actually been in the middle of all that can you just
17:21explain a
17:21little bit about are these arguments just people briefing to the papers and it's and it's not real
17:26is it really the treasury that always the baddies where does this all come about and is it a fair
17:30characterization from andy burnham to say that it's always just turf wars and fighting and that is the
17:36big blocker to getting anything done so i liked this bit of the speech i thought it was really do
17:43you
17:43lie back in your tepid bath and being oh yes i do actually like this time of year i love
17:48a tepid bath
17:50top tip yeah he talked about this being the problem that whitehall just couldn't agree with itself
17:55and you know he's got something of a point that is annoying actually when you can't get government
18:01to join up and you and i both sat there in the middle of the center of government tearing your
18:06hair
18:06out because you literally cannot get the people in the department for transport to agree with the
18:11people in the department for energy or to agree with the people it's it's difficult right but
18:16that's for a reason it's because these are genuinely lots lots of the infighting in whitehall isn't kind
18:22of people just having a scrap because they want to or politicians trying to get one over on each other
18:27it's because there are actual structural choices to make so uh if you say infrastructure investment is
18:35a really good one you have a finite amount of money uh to spend on capital so that is like
18:41actual stuff that you and i can see you know trains a roads nuclear power plants you know
18:48whatever it is like capital investment housing development you've got to make some choices
18:52about which of those where to put that money of course the people who work in the department
18:57for transport are going to say to you well actually the thing you should do is pay for transport
19:01and of course the people who work in the department for housing are going to say no no no no
19:05the
19:06transport can come second we need to build the houses first and of course the people who work in the
19:10department for energy are going to say well no no no the investment needs to go first into the grid
19:14because unless you have that so these are whitehall tensions are quite often real tensions because you
19:22are making a choice and i think one of the things that you know we've talked a bit before about
19:27this
19:27on the pod that one of the things that hits new prime ministers pretty hard is that to govern is
19:33to
19:33choose that effectively what you have to do all day easy decisions are taken elsewhere the hard
19:40decisions which is right are we backing this or that are we investing our money in hs2 or not in
19:48hs2
19:48yeah are we going to allow this business to go to the wall are we going to allow these are
19:55all hard
19:55choices about scarcity of resource and time and effort whether that is money or legislative time or
20:01whatever and you as the prime minister have to make a choice and the whitehall tensions are quite often
20:07articulated through that it's not it's not just a department versus department it's what should i do
20:13have you picked up from any of your former civil service colleagues who are still in how they have
20:18reacted to the speech because you you say it warms your heart this section was there a certain
20:23amount of cynical eye rolling thinking well you know there's infighting for a reason or people thinking
20:29do you know what maybe he could actually unblock some of this stuff this this would be fantastic
20:34if someone is coming in willing to make some choices we understand what our marching orders
20:39are and we just go and do it so i think it's fair to say they are very keen to
20:43have some marching
20:44orders because that's one of the things that they feel they've not really had under this government
20:48enough um i think that there's been a lot of talk in whitehall for a long time about place-based
20:55decision making so actually you should make decisions about a place in the place some of
20:59this stuff you and i remember the first time i heard someone talk about place-based decision
21:03making i was like what's the alternative to that like aren't all decisions made in a place this is
21:10very confusing so so there's been lots and lots and lots of kind of efforts and initiatives and
21:15my poor old former department the ministry for housing and local government has for years and years
21:20tried to get the rest of whitehall to see that it's sort of even if it doesn't let places make
21:26their own decision making they should at least have a little bit of a thought about the fact that
21:30all of these things that they are independently doing are having the same impacts on a place and
21:36you're asking one poor council to suddenly on one day of the week do one thing and then another
21:40like that there is a there is a frustration there yes i think that uh if andy burnham is able
21:47to
21:48properly deliver on this through his ministerial team then it will be really different because
21:53the other thing that happens is you get all of this high rhetoric and then either the chancellor
21:57themselves or the people who are running departments will say oh yeah but that doesn't
22:03really apply to us because politicians like to be powerful and this is all about taking power that
22:09you hold and giving real power real decision making definitely the credit not often all the blame
22:17to another set of politicians somewhere far away that you're not in charge of
22:20yes well speaking of place-based decision making just practically again from running whitehall
22:29how is it going to work with the prime minister taking half his decisions or having half of his nerve
22:34center in the north of england do you think there is something quite healthy it's almost like an away
22:40day day thing of like having some distance and not having you know the um the top brass and the
22:47mod being able to march across the road and boss you around for example they'll have to get a two
22:51and a
22:51half hour train that might be delayed to come and take you have a have a bit of decompression time
22:56there
22:56have been plans in the past to move bits of government around the country do you think that
23:03practically this is going to work i really like the idea of number 10 in the north i said it
23:09you can
23:10see all the civil servants just like googling flats on right move right now yeah that's what we did
23:14when we wanted to move the house of lords to york which is still an excellent idea i stand by
23:18that
23:18um but i think number 10 north is a really good idea one of the issues with our governing is
23:23that sw1
23:24which is the postcode where whitehall is is like a terrible place to make decisions that affect the
23:30whole of the country london is atypical abnormal the kind of people who can afford to live and work
23:38with incommutable distance to sw1 are not representative of the country now we saw that
23:45kind of quite strong actually in the um we talked about this last week about the in the brexit referendum
23:50um sw1 isn't representative the civil service is not representative of everybody now
23:55does it have to be different question would it be a good thing if a large amount of the prime
24:01minister's
24:03personal kind of advice and thinking had in it the dna of people outside of sw1 a hundred percent
24:09it's one of the problems you and i had in covid times was the massive disconnect from most people's
24:16ordinary lives and the uh people who are in the room making the decisions so i think and in this
24:23day
24:23it's just nonsense to suggest that you actually physically need to be in one place in order to
24:30get anything done having said that power goes with the guy you should be able to literally sense that
24:40the prime minister is in the building in number 10 i think i always thought you always could you
24:44could it just the fridays when they're in their constituency or at a summit or something oh when
24:49they want to some i still love that it's blessed relief they're actually out of the country i can do
24:52some other stuff and it's suddenly like they're back they're back you can feel it in the building
24:57so prime ministers carry their power with them so the real question is like could andy burnham have
25:04his policy team based in manchester of course he could is andy burnham going to base himself in
25:09manchester that's a different question because that's when you really have decision making somewhere
25:15different and go back to what you said at the beginning of the episode there are more places
25:18available in the country than just manchester so she says slightly bitterly still so so you uh
25:24have to think about you know would it be a good idea to have other units not just in manchester
25:31but
25:31in other parts of the country you talked about the treasury in darlington that's been a massive success
25:35one of the things that's been a success about it is because different people who wouldn't normally
25:40have got jobs in the civil service or thought about it have started working in the offices in
25:44darlington and that's great it's been a really really good way of kind of freshening things up
25:49and having a different set of talent and perspective of people who don't you know not everybody wants to
25:54live in london not everyone wants to work in london people might not have thought about a career in
25:58national government and actually if you can have a career in national government outside of london
26:02tremendous i think it's a good thing i think that's fair i think my my only counter to that because
26:06you know how i hate to disagree with you is i think cove is probably my best um example of
26:13this
26:13that you can have these zoom calls and they can be very productive you can have the formal meeting
26:17but so much goes on in person around the meetings the little chats when you're getting your cup of
26:24coffee before or after and lots of relationships are made that way you know some of it is a lot
26:31of
26:31what people find distasteful gossip and so on but you pick up all kinds of stuff in the margins and
26:35once the zoom call is over you don't know and you don't know what the other people are saying in
26:39the
26:39room once you've gone off and i i i think it is difficult you can get a lot of business
26:46done
26:46but i think sometimes some of those atmospherics particularly because you want to see how the
26:52prime minister is reacting and the other key stakeholders you can't really tell that so much
26:57so i actually don't disagree with you i don't disagree with you i keep being told to disagree more
27:02so unfortunately this isn't it um because this is place based decision making in this place
27:08just make all the decisions um i agree with you so it's not going to work if it is the
27:15prime minister
27:16has a number 10 in the north and actually it's just a group of people on a zoom call with
27:21a load of
27:21people in in sw1 that's that's not what this should be if it's meaningful it does need to be
27:28that the actual real life prime minister and the actual real life prime minister's chief of staff
27:32and all the people think they're too important to leave the postcode actually do and they base
27:36themselves for a part of the week or part of the time it's quite complicated it's the thing i say
27:41so
27:42as soon as you talk about an office called number 10 and a place where the prime minister and his
27:47most
27:47senior advisors need to be you have a proper security question yes so you know this not this is not
27:54and i know that this conversation is going on about where this might be there was there was quite a
27:58lot
27:58of sensitivity around uh if you're going to really have a nerve center for our country's government in
28:06another place then that needs a bit of careful thought just one last bit of the speech i want to
28:11talk about before we talk about what he didn't say and how the other parties are kind of coping with
28:16this he very carefully did not say the words cost of living which i thought was interesting but he did
28:22talk about wanting to boost uh living standards over the next 10 years wouldn't you just love a um
28:30election cycle to be 10 years just from when you were a civil servant to have all that time to
28:35play
28:35with but andy burnham doesn't have that much time obviously he's pitching for the next election
28:41too but you know i heard boris johnson talking about a boost in living standards for the next
28:4610 years again is this just a bit of pie in the sky thinking or is it absolutely necessary to
28:53have to
28:53look to 10 years time and say you know i i need this much time to do what i'm talking
28:58about it's
29:00interesting isn't it because i do i literally remember as being in checkers in january 2020
29:05talking very explicitly about 10 years of boris johnson i think we even called it johnsonism at the
29:10time heaven forfend but we did uh we did talk about and start to actually properly plot and plan
29:16out what the first what would be in the first term what would be in the second term how you
29:21could bring
29:21some stuff forward to get you that second the magic second term um and keir starmer when he came into
29:28power i think people thought similarly he had an extremely long with this size of the majority
29:32extremely long road ahead of him i don't know enough whether there were proper plans about actually
29:37what does 10 years look like it's an amazing amount of open road if you get the opportunity
29:41to have that in front of you because you really can do the kind of stuff that you feel like
29:47you don't
29:47get chance to that said i mean you only get 10 years from today if you win the next election
29:55and the
29:55next election after that and some of the changes so just take fiscal deep it will take a long time
30:02for people to see and feel the real impacts of some of this stuff it's definitely not going to happen
30:07before the next election you can you can talk about it excitedly you might be able to do a couple
30:12of
30:12like slightly interesting things but these sorts of really significant changes take a very long time so
30:19i'm sure he's you know he's a clever man and he is for all the kind of narrative around him
30:26he's a
30:26professional politician but i think that he uh he will know that he's got to do some things before
30:31you know this before year nine put it that way and fast i think that's absolutely right in order to
30:38get 10 years you have to do the first two years at breakneck speed essentially and yeah i remember
30:43that conversation really well our plan was you know obviously this is without covid win the 2019
30:48general election and then in order to win the election after that we had to do a few things very
30:53very quickly not least things that people feel and notice right away so break ground on 40 hospitals
31:02yeah new houses right by railway stations using those brownfield sites stuff like that so people
31:07see that even if they're not feeling the immediate benefit yet they do see the cranes and the diggers
31:12and they think oh yeah stuff's going on around here i like that and you can point to it and
31:17say
31:18i've started but i need you to give me your votes for five more years in order to get that
31:22done and
31:23so he's got to get going very very quickly i'm quite interested to talk about and obviously this
31:28is our response to the burnham speech but i think it is worth spending a little bit of time
31:34on what the politics of all this means how everybody else has responded so kemi of course came straight
31:40out the gates ahead of his speech to i suppose try and try and frame what he's about to say
31:47having
31:48seen quite a lot of it briefed into the weekend papers already farage came out immediately afterwards
31:54and essentially says this is more of the same it's sort of keir starmer in a cool t-shirt and
32:00then he
32:00called him open borders andy which was interesting we'll talk about um burnham's wisdom in in not
32:07mentioning it's not a very good nickname no there's there's a slight illustrative thing to it but bearing
32:13in mind he didn't mention immigration i thought i just thought interesting richard tite also from
32:18reform said that um it's far he's he's extreme far left and it's extreme socialism and what it what
32:27just really occurred to me off the back of the speech is particularly the right don't quite know
32:33how to how to attack burnham at the moment do they attack him as this is a very frightening and
32:39dangerous agenda and you should all be worried and they're going to be exit taxes and stuff like
32:43that or is this more of the same and because he's he's able to frame himself as a bit of
32:50an outsider
32:51because he's seems to be resisting the trappings of the center by saying i'm going to have this
32:56this number 10 in the north and yet he is going to be established he is going to ultimately be
33:02the
33:02biggest insider whether he can keep up being able to play both things at once will be
33:08very interesting i love that though i love how he's messing with everyone's heads and it's not
33:13easy to pigeonhole as left or right and not easy to pigeonhole as insider or outsider and is he in
33:19a
33:19t-shirt or is he in a tie and is he this or is he that it's like it's fun
33:23when politicians sort of
33:24defy gravity a bit i did think that he made a couple of mistakes personally if i were running the
33:29kind of
33:30attack team in one of the other party headquarters i thought things like growth in every postcode
33:36cut so that's such a hostage to fortune right cut to a year's time growth in what and because partly
33:44because leaflets are done by postcode you could literally look at crime stats you could look at
33:49oh that's grown right exactly i don't know childhood obesity or what what has antisocial behavior you
33:56could just send out a list in your postcode andy burnham said growth would would happen in your
34:01postcode he's right here are all the terrible things that have you know that that was quite
34:06interesting and quite easily done it also reminded me on that of the gem of the leveling up agenda of
34:13course you do and it's suddenly everyone's going to be leveled up like yeah is everyone going to be
34:18connect to what what how does that work so growth again to governors to choose in general some of his
34:24word salads the the place-based cooperation finger pointing point scoring um i think that's fine but
34:33whilst he's riding on this wave of vibes that all feels quite good but if things do go wrong and
34:41the
34:41wheels do come off for him it's just so easy to play this stuff back you know well here we
34:46are prime
34:46minister's questions well prime minister i hope you don't mind me point scoring or finger pointing but
34:51you have failed on the following things he has sort of as you say he's made himself a hostage to
34:56fortune with some of this stuff it's quite risky isn't it because you can see there's a bit of high
35:00on your own supplyness to some of this very uh like extravagant rhetoric he's going to be different
35:08totally and you're absolutely right so i've quite enjoyed in some of the reporting of andy's speech
35:14people being very grumpy about uh what andy burnham didn't say like he should have stood up and
35:20told us absolutely everything he has in his mind about being prime minister however there were some
35:26quite big gaps weren't they clear there were a few gaps for example he didn't say the word immigration
35:32once which was interesting although this was billed you know to be totally fair to him as a broad brush
35:40economic vision for the future um which i think he delivered on in that sense because apart from
35:47the firm commitment of of devolution quite quite vague um one of the things that seems to have
35:56hacked people off is that they wanted him to essentially unveil his cabinet exactly who he'd have
36:02the top thing on people's mind seems to be chancellor there's great fear amongst the financial markets that
36:08it might be ed milliband and in 2015 you know he was hailed as red ed people were it's hard
36:15to remember
36:15this now because we've had corbyn since but people were very worried about ed milliband coming in and
36:19david cameron said that we were going to have chaos with ed milliband chaos with ed milliband and i mean
36:23he did do a couple of weird things it's incredibly dated now the idea that russell brand was his kind
36:29of big um his big shout to the kids do you remember he had this like kitchen supper with russell
36:34brand in
36:35one of his many kitchens it's cancelled um in one of his many kitchens where you know russell said i'm
36:41the
36:41you must vote ed i don't know and the millifans do you remember the millifans like he there was a
36:47big
36:48there was a big youthful push it was a cult of personality there was a cult of personality
36:51extraordinary there is to say it but but similarly you know the markets were very nervous then and
36:57and certainly the conservatives were able to paint him as exactly as you say chaos with ed milliband
37:02red ed what do you think mystic mystic mac so it's interesting that i think they have very very
37:10firmly kind of rolled the pitch for rachel reeves going and that's happened in the last few days
37:16and uh she has sort of indicated that that's kind of what she's expecting to and uh so i i
37:24think there
37:24have been some thoughts a couple of weeks ago that maybe she would stay and that doesn't look likely
37:29anymore so i would bet on shabana mamood oh no now we've said her lovely name okay well that opens
37:38up
37:38a lovely little hole at the home office what happens there john healy previously defense secretary
37:45very uh interesting resignation recently that essentially got the ball rolling for keir starmer
37:50going and a man everyone likes i don't know i mean the problem if you did have shabana mamood as
37:54chancellor then you have left a problem in the home office which is a hell of a department yes and
38:00you
38:00would need somebody really tough to do that i mean personally i think shabana mamood is doing such an
38:04amazing job as home secretary that i wouldn't you know necessarily think it's a good idea to move her
38:09but if you do need a new chancellor i would have thought somebody who is that clever well regarded and
38:16tough enough yes it's not going to be easy because it even even with a very strong prime minister who's
38:23got a very clear idea who's given everybody very clear instructions let's imagine for a second that
38:27that's the situation we'll be dealing with the actual job of chancellor is has to project massive
38:32amounts of confidence and you do have to make some really difficult decisions and you're going to have
38:37to carry some of the things that andy ben has already signaled he's going to do like there is going
38:41to be a reduction in the amount of money spent on welfare that's tough and you might want pat
38:46for example again widely respected tough old old labor old labor new labor guy to stay where he is
38:54in welfare because in terms of transformation that's a department that needs a really big
38:58pat and shabana together dream team i mean well they will she be making that many spending decisions
39:04because it's all being developed it's like everybody else's problem good luck to you lads
39:07like you get a car you get a car yes i do i mean i you're right i think both
39:14my ground
39:15ground my teeth and flared my nostrils at the kind of ridiculousness of people being disappointed
39:19that andy burnham didn't set out his cabinet yesterday okay so on the one hand we've got
39:23um the cause for ed milliband to be made a chancellor but i am hearing little rumors that
39:28david milliband might be making a return do you know i sat next to david milliband last thursday
39:34event at the ifg um so as i said actually we were on the same panel it wasn't just that
39:38we happened
39:39to be sat next to each other in the audience and alex thomas at the ifg very elegantly
39:43uh put him on the spot and said you know would you would you consider serving under an andy burnham
39:49administration and i was genuinely quite surprised by david's reaction because i sort of thought he
39:54would just go oh you know now i've got a job i live in new york i'm doing the red
39:58cross thing
39:59and he did a version of well if the ball comes loose oh this is exciting so that would be
40:05you
40:05know bearing in mind andy burnham is not keen on the house of lords by all accounts this would
40:09presumably mean david milliband becoming lord milliband of the north um somewhere and coming
40:18apparently coming in as foreign secretary one of the things i think is quite interesting about that
40:22by the way it's of course david cameron lord cameron was lord cameron did that in the dog days of
40:26rishi sunak's administration but that there was a deliberate move there which was rishi sunak saying
40:31not only do i want you to come in as foreign secretary i want you to essentially crack on and
40:35do all that
40:36because i'm i'm very focused on the domestic agenda by the sounds of burnham's first speech
40:41that's what he wants to do also there are rumors that he would keep jonathan powell on as national
40:47security advisor what do you think of the milliband speculation coming in through the lords coming in
40:52as foreign secretary and do you think that that is just a move from burnham thinking he's an old
40:57mucker of mine and i just want to kind of give him this brief and i can crack on i
41:03think it's really
41:03heartening to see that actually it looks like andy burnham is drawing on the actual storied and star
41:10ranks that the labour party has at its disposal one of the things i found really weird about the
41:14starmer government was they had a really really good a team of set of people and they just didn't
41:21really use them so kind of big tick for like why don't you use your talent o labour party that
41:26seems
41:26like a very good idea personally very excited about siblings in the cabinet that's fun we have that
41:32with the johnson brothers for a period of time do you remember that was entertaining we've had in
41:37the labour party the eagles the eagle sisters the reeves girls the reeves girls probably do sit around
41:42the cabinet table together don't they um so you know a little bit of sibling rivalry in a cabinet
41:47setting quite fun i don't know though i i feel like mps do not like people being made peers and
41:53coming in to have a plum cabinet they don't like that no because they think it's dead yeah yeah but
41:58you know what i'm like relentlessly don't care about that because i think what you should have
42:03is the best people in the job whoever they are i'm excited for the dictatorship coming
42:08the government of all the talents i was interested as a little side note when burnham mentioned you know
42:16how he thinks westminster is a very unhappy place now and that he doesn't like whipping mps on votes
42:22and he'd rather like to do away with that and i did think to myself andy come on that's easily
42:29said
42:29now no one likes to do it but you're just gonna have to you know you he's got a parliamentary
42:35party
42:36where it feels like he has this massive majority we've talked about this so many times but actually
42:40a lot of people sitting on the labour benches have paper paper thin majorities and some's got 15
42:47vote majority where streeting has 600 it's tiny so as things get tougher and you know with all the
42:55changes he wants to make with the best will in the world things are going to slip you need whipping
43:00you know keir starmer has had to use a very effective whipping operation at various points
43:06with his own mps to save embarrassing votes and frankly he's lost a few of those this comes out of
43:12what andy burnham said yesterday about not wanting a really aggressive whipping operation
43:16comes out of some mistakes that were made in the early starmer government about instead of doing
43:22the thing that parties with large majorities and the labour party historically done which is like
43:26allow people to rebel a little bit like with the size of majority they had i think them made a
43:31quite
43:31big mistake quite early on with being incredibly aggressive of everybody has to vote with the government and
43:37there's no opportunity to rebel whereas there's a long and storied history of labour mps occasionally
43:43voting against their own side and by not allowing that little rebellion in the beginning they created
43:50much bigger problems themselves by having huge numbers of mps vote against them so i think there's a
43:56there's a sort of let's all be friends stand in our prayer circle whatever it was version of of let's
44:02not
44:02whip as aggressively but there is a bit of a balance here with this sort of majority with mps who
44:08will
44:08be fighting every single other party in their constituency there may well be times when either
44:13for political expedience sake or just for because that's that's what they want to do that you have
44:18to let a bit of latitude i think actually that is smart but he did also say you know i
44:24essentially
44:24want to do away whipping but you do have to do what i want just but you just you just
44:29said i've now
44:30not got a stick i'm just gonna what beat you with a carrot he's got he's very charming he's lovely
44:35i
44:35just don't who can disagree with that's one of the things i don't think he did need to say um
44:39that
44:39that could have been saved for a whatsapp group or something i think one of the questions i think he
44:45may well have been asked is do you think that you are the first female labour leader slash prime
44:51minister in all but sex and the reason i asked that is because last the towards the end of last
44:56week
44:57there was a bit of a furore because tim shipman in the spectator published a quote from a labour
45:04insider a senior labour insider but we don't know who we'd like to know i think was trying to be
45:09helpful but managed to just botch it horribly do you want to read it out in fact one senior figure
45:14in the party even describes bernon as labour's first woman prime minister the reason labour have
45:20always craved but also been cautious about a female leader is because in a labour government she could
45:26have an unashamedly female agenda what might be on that agenda helen focused on health education
45:32family finances and issues like safer streets social care online safety for kids that are
45:38disproportionately important to women unlike the tory female leaders who are under internal pressure
45:44and the weight of history to show how tough they are on traditional male issues along comes andy
45:49surrounded by female advisors and backers but more importantly genuinely passionate about all those
45:54traditionally female orientated issues and much less so with bombs and budgets so could we finally
46:02see what labour has failed to deliver all these years a female pm in all but sex this is a
46:07classic
46:07example of sort of being too popular because everyone's trying to help you even the complete idiots
46:13and that is a perfect example of that it's so unhelpful i can see how there's this attempt to kind
46:18of
46:18on the one hand demystify you know or there's an attempt to um separate him from the toxic boys club
46:26that keir starman was accused of being in charge by having all these female advisors around him the idea
46:32that women are not interested in bombs and budgets or the idea that men are not interested in education or
46:38safer streets i find so insulting i just find it amazing and the idea that theresa may was trying to
46:45like
46:45outlad the lads poor oppressed theresa may and margaret thatcher just doing what the men wanted it turned out
46:50yeah because theresa may just wanted to your whole agenda she just wanted to do it about like
46:54just wants to talk about lady things yes yes not allowed to some because of the patriarchy lady
47:00yeah it's it's still making my blood boil and i think the the broader point here is that
47:05there is a real issue that yet again here we are with nobody standing in this labour leadership contest
47:13who's not a man labour have a proper problem here and they like to think they don't yeah and this
47:20the fact that that is a senior labour person who not only thinks like that about women but thought it
47:27was useful to talk like that just gives you a sense of why they are where they are and it
47:33is extremely
47:34dangerous and problematic and wrong and it's not a question of saying it's okay actually because i've got
47:40loads of great women on my team and aren't these women great and you know i'm scared of her indoors
47:45which is sometimes what you get like actually really matters that there are actual real life women who
47:51are involved in powerful jobs making decisions and having an input not just because of female issues
47:58thanks for listening to today's episode remember to follow the show on your podcast player of choice
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48:25the independent podcast network and produce in association with next chapter studios the executive
48:29producer is rod adahali and the producer is sam durham and a special mention to our content editor
48:34maya anushka our video editor vali raza and our videographer dan faber thank you all thanks for
48:40listening see you next week
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