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00:00So it's that time of year again. Reform last week was interesting, probably in the scandal
00:05didn't really touch the sides. The centre of energy for the reform party, the activists,
00:10the shining lights, was the reform party itself. It's really different.
00:14Sir Keir Starmer has decided to step down from his seat of Hobart and St Pancras. It's a test
00:20of whether Burnhamism can fight both flanks effectively. If he does win, maybe there will
00:26be a general election sooner than people think. The big challenge to the Conservatives is
00:30they are electorally dead in a lot of parts of the country. Welcome back to In The Room
00:35and we've got a great back to school feeling in the studio today. We can't wait to get started.
00:40We're going to kick off with talking about reform. And we're going to ask can Kemi Badenoch's
00:46reshuffle translate into electoral success. And we'll look at what Andy Burnham's first
00:51moves back. Tell us about the political year ahead, including a rather unexpected
00:56by-election taking place in Keir Starmer's seat. I'm Helen McNamara, the former Deputy
01:00Cabinet Secretary. And I'm Claire Watson, a former Special Advisor to Theresa May
01:04and Boris Johnson. And this is In The Room.
01:10We hope you enjoyed our summer interview series and we're very grateful for all of the comments
01:14that you sent us. Thank you for your emails, particularly on our Count Bimface episode,
01:19which we very much enjoyed. We agree with a message from listener Mish, who said that
01:24government is significantly poorer without Bimface.
01:27Yeah, there were quite a few comments on how my bin wasn't really a proper bin hat. So I've got
01:33to
01:33get back to the drawing board for Halloween, Helen.
01:35Feedback is a gift. I think we can all agree.
01:38Now, if you'd like to get in touch as well, you can email us. We are intheroom at independent.co
01:44.uk.
01:44And we'd love it if you followed us on Instagram, where you can find all the best bits of the
01:50pod and
01:50you can see what I'm talking about with the bins. We are at intheroom.pod. And you can watch us
01:57on
01:57YouTube. Our channel is In The Room Politics. We're all caught up. Now, it's been a long,
02:02hot summer, Hells. What did you get up to?
02:05It didn't cope with the heatwave very well, it's fair to say.
02:08We don't like it.
02:09We don't like it. I like a temperate climb, it turns out.
02:12But were you well stocked with gallons of water and so on for our house?
02:16Of course, I prepped the hell out of it. Yeah, as always. No one was too hot in my house
02:20and
02:20we did have plentiful supplies.
02:21Phew. Okay, well done. I was busy writing, trying to finish my book. If my editor's listening,
02:27I'll be with you.
02:27It's finished. It's done. She's done it.
02:29Dossing the I's, crossing the T's, you know. And Hippo had his own holiday. He was in Clacton,
02:35funnily enough.
02:36That's Hippo, your dog.
02:37Hippo, the dog. He was in Clacton with some friends of mine where it was not that peaceful
02:41and tranquil because, of course, there was a tub-thumping by-election, which I think we
02:46can say Nigel Farage did manage to win very decisively against Count Binface, which leads
02:54us on into a very neat segue. I think we can all agree.
02:57We've been away for the summer, but we've not lost it. There we go.
03:00Still sharp.
03:02Into reform. So here's a little catch up for people who have missed this.
03:06Reformer plunged into what you could call a crisis, I think, after an undercover sting
03:11on Channel 4 appeared to catch senior aides discussing how to bypass electoral laws to
03:17accept illicit overseas political funding. Not good. The revelation prompted the immediate
03:24resignation of Nigel Farage's chief of staff, Dan Dukes, and head of policy, James Orr, who
03:30are, I mean, really senior reform figures, who are now, interestingly, are referred to
03:34as consultants. Just a funny turn of phrase, but a distance there. And it really disrupted
03:39the party's annual conference on the weekend, which you had to attend.
03:44Or did it, I think, is the interesting question there. So you're right. It's like, by any normal
03:50standards, a kind of scandal. I think listening to what you hear from people who do support
03:55reform, they're straight into the, it's an establishment conspiracy, this is all priced
04:00in. It's fair to say, yeah, and it was some climate change activists that had worked with
04:06so you have all of the kind of trigger buttons, climate change activists, Sting, Undercover,
04:11Channel 4, all of those, all of those things, you know, is the mainstream media having a pop
04:17R. Nige again. And what was interesting about the reform was a few things that were interesting
04:22about the reform conference. And the first is probably that I just, this stuff just doesn't
04:27make a difference to them. It just, it just doesn't. And, you know, I think probably the
04:32more damaging thing, given if reform do want to, you know, ride over the hill as a government
04:38in the future, the more damaging thing is probably the competence question rather than the corruption
04:44question. Because I don't think voters like people who are like not very good. And even if that's
04:50not very good at being baddies. Which is your pet peeve. I like a competent baddie. Because it kind of
04:57just looked like really bunglingly amateur. And so the clip looks terrible. What they're doing is
05:04obviously not just wrong and bad, but it's wrong and bad and clumsy and amateur. And it's, you know,
05:11all of those things. I think the competence question for reform is quite a big one. And
05:17different this time that Nigel Farge did actually fire these two people really, really quickly. So
05:22sorry, technically, they resigned. But that is different. I think a year ago, I'm not sure that
05:26he would have. He was usually hunker down, keep my people close to me, get lost everyone else. And
05:32it is different, I think that they actually got fired.
05:35One of the things I thought was most interesting about it is reform don't need the money. I don't know
05:40why they would take these gambles. And to be clear, I don't really go for it for a sting piece
05:47of investigative journalism, the kind of fake shake stuff where people are sort of entrapped
05:51into saying something they shouldn't. But the issue with Dan Dukes and James Orr is that they
05:55are the ones suggesting it. I mean, there's no sting in that sense.
05:59There's not even a sting.
06:02Their words have not been taken out of context on this one. But I don't know why they're doing it.
06:07So the Q2 figures for political declarations and funding have just come in. And just to
06:16give a bit of context here, the Conservatives raised 2.8 million, Labour 3.5 million, the
06:21Lib Dems 1.3 million, and reform raised over 5 million pounds in three months.
06:26I love the fact that you think that it's political parties are like, oh, no, thanks. I've had
06:29enough money. I've got plenty. It's absolutely fine.
06:32But it's the risk appetite, which I find quite interesting.
06:34Yeah, that's what these fellas are like, though, aren't they? The other thing that was
06:37interesting about the reform, so we are getting into party conference season, folks. Exciting
06:42times.
06:43If you're already seeing chocolate advent calendars and things for Halloween, and you're disgusted,
06:48brace yourselves, because there are going to be novelty cups and tape bags on the scene soon.
06:53I love a bit of conference merch. I do. I can't stop myself. Too many tote bags and pens
06:58and notebooks that I then stare at, sadly, for the rest of the year. Anyway, we've got
07:01party conference season coming up. So we had reform last week. We've got the Liberal Democrats
07:05this weekend. Then we've got Labour and then the Conservatives in that order, I think. And
07:10the Greens are somewhere sneaking in in the middle. So it's that time of year again. Reform
07:14last week was interesting, probably in the scandal didn't really touch the sides, but
07:19also that it feels very different. So normally...
07:23What to other conferences?
07:25Yeah. And I am. You are much more of a party conference veteran than me. And I'm sure that
07:29when we get into the Conservative, you can look at your face and it's like, no.
07:33But it's not like being like a nine-time marathon runner or something.
07:37No, fair enough.
07:38Although it is a marathon.
07:38Although it does feel a bit like that. But I've been to a few since I left the civil
07:42service, obviously, in various jobs. And they are striking in lots of ways. One of them
07:47is it's just kind of Westminster on tour. So it's all the same people that you see all
07:51the time in all of the kind of environs of Westminster and Parliament and all the people
07:56who are chatting to each other all the time. Just go to wherever it is, Liverpool, Brighton,
08:01Birmingham, Manchester, and then chat to each other in that place instead.
08:05Although in a much more intense environment. So Westminster throughout the year, you're sort
08:08of micro-dosing it. And then this is like one heavy trip over three days.
08:14It's to taste. Let's put it that way. But the striking thing I've said, I've found from
08:18the conferences I've been to before is that the actual hall where the business of the conference
08:23is going on. So that's where the party activists are listening to the speakers, setting out their
08:27ambitions and plans for the party and doing all of the kind of thing that you sort of think
08:32is the main business of the conference is usually totally deserted.
08:36And there are always really embarrassing pictures, aren't there, of like just a few people scattered
08:40in for the Home Secretary's speech and they're asleep.
08:43It's yeah, it's not. And that's not where the kind of business business is going on. The
08:46business business is going on in the fringe events, in the parties, in all of the lobbying
08:51and the conversations in the think tanks. And I need to be careful here because my think tank
08:54is obviously going to be all over.
08:56I'm all over. I am in no way criticising these things. But the kind of centre of gravity is not
09:01the hall. The centre of gravity is everything else. And a reformer is entirely the opposite.
09:06So really, you had quite a lot of kind of Westminster people slightly grumbling about the fact and
09:11the business people grumbling about the dinner wasn't very good. And they just, you know,
09:16they weren't.
09:16What food?
09:17Well, it's more that there weren't enough kind of reform movers and shakers around to talk
09:21to. And the centre of energy for the reform party, the activists, the kind of shining light
09:28was the reform party itself. It's really different. So the hall was jam packed. Everybody was wearing
09:34their kind of reform merch. There were some extraordinary sites of people who possibly
09:39should know better wearing quite lots of teal nylon. It was it was kind of extraordinary
09:44to see. And this incredible kind of buzz around the ideas. And it was really different. So
09:51people are listening to what the engaging in the debate about policy and politics, which
09:56is unusual.
09:57It's also interesting to have a scandal from the outside, which, if anything, just entrenches
10:04the people inside further. So having this sense of it's the establishment are against
10:10us. One of the things I thought they did quite well was they sort of framed the conference as
10:14this is what the hundred, the first hundred days of a reform government would look like.
10:18And it was all about delivery. So in many ways, their policies, you know, apart from a few,
10:24which I find are a bit rich for my blood, are quite similar to the Conservatives and even
10:30some to Labour. But this was all about how they would do it and how quickly they would
10:34do it. And the laws they'd be willing to, you know, overturn and so on to give delegates
10:40this sense of this is how it would be. And the way that is undermined is two of the kind
10:46of key figures in Nigel Farage's circle on how that would be delivered and how they've gone.
10:51Well, it's interesting. So some people were saying, well, actually, what you're seeing in
10:55the conference last week is all of the plans and preparations that they were doing for their
10:59conference six months ago. And it's sort of that was the high point that's encapsulated and now
11:05Burnham's in and everything's changed and reform and Badenock is coming up. And this is going to
11:10we're going to look back at this and say this was reform high point. And then everything's changed
11:15since then. However, I was with a very wise and clever friend last night who said one of the
11:21things that he found striking about reform, when you listen to what reform voters say about why they
11:26are engaged and why they're activists and why they've become councillors and why this is the first
11:31time in their life for lots of people that they've really become politically engaged, that they feel
11:35listened to, they feel listened to, they feel heard, they feel part of something. And people aren't going to
11:41turn away from that very easily. These might be people who feel in the whole of the rest of their
11:44life, they've not been heard and listened to, whether it was by their wife or their boss or
11:48the establishment or the mainstream, and they found somewhere they belong. And that identity is
11:53extremely powerful. Yeah. And that's what worked for us in the referendum in 2016 for the Leave
11:58campaign. We got out people who often had never voted before, and they felt heard and they felt part
12:03of something. And it worked last week for the AFD in East Germany. An astonishing number of their
12:08voters were people who had not been on the electoral roll before, and they suddenly turned out.
12:14My great sadness, though, is that we did not have Andrea Jenkins singing a song in her sparkly
12:20jumpsuit. To be honest, it was the only reason I went to Birmingham. I can't believe they did not
12:23let her back out onto the stage to do that. Another beautiful segue coming up because, speaking of
12:30by-elections, we're about to have our sixth by-election this year, which is the last time we
12:38had this many was 2023, where we had five. And before that, we've only ever had maybe two a
12:46year. So six. And the year's not over, Helen. Obviously, I spend a lot of time with people who
12:51talk a lot about politics. Your enthusiasm for a by-election, like, knows no bounds.
12:55I've got a by-election fever like you would not believe this year, but that's because they just
12:58keep coming. You're hoping to try and get a seventh in before the year's out. I don't know. I think
13:03it
13:03could happen. But I mean, that's just, so that's seven over the course of this parliament, six this
13:08year. I mean, that doesn't speak to great stability. But still, onwards and upwards. So in case you've
13:15missed this, Sir Keir Starmer, lately our prime minister, has decided to step down from his seat
13:21of Hobart and St Pancras, having promised that he wouldn't do that and that he would carry on until
13:262029. Did you notice that he announced it on Andy Burnham's first day back at school?
13:31Yes, I did. Which is... I thought that was a bit mean.
13:35It's just a bit petty because it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't help him. One of the things
13:40that is so difficult about Starmer is that his, his premiership was defined by him trying to say,
13:45I'm not one of the others. And yet he took political donations for things like his suits and his
13:52glasses and stuff like that. And he put a load of people into the House of Lords who he said
13:57he
13:57wouldn't. And then he immediately resigned a month after saying he definitely wouldn't. And,
14:06you know, I think it contrasts badly with his predecessor, Rishi Sunak, who's carried on in
14:10the House of Commons, doing lots of other interests as well, but staying a very good constituency MP.
14:17It looks careerist, it's fair to say. It looks like what he wanted to be was the prime minister,
14:22and then he's given that a go and now he's out and he wants to do something different.
14:25We don't love it. We don't love it here. But it is shaping up. I just want to say a
14:30very quick word
14:30on Hoban and St. Pancras and then I want to move on. But it is shaping up to be quite
14:34an interesting
14:36fight, I think. Zach Polanski, the leader of the Green Party, has said that he's going to fight it
14:41and he's actually already been out shaking hands and buttering people up. And the reason it's quite an
14:47interesting fight is obviously it comes so soon into Andy Burnham's new premiership. It's obviously
14:52not the first by-election because we've had Clackton, but Burnham didn't really have to put
14:56in a shift there. But if Makerfield was Labour versus reform, this is looking like Labour versus
15:03the Greens. And it's a test of whether this sort of Burnham bounce and Burnhamism can fight both
15:10flanks effectively. If he does win and Labour win quite decisively, maybe there will be a general
15:18election sooner than people think. Apparently, reform and the Tories are preparing for May.
15:22We don't know who the candidate is, though, do we?
15:24No, we do not. No. So they've just closed applications for who that will be.
15:28Did you apply?
15:30No.
15:31Not this time.
15:32I'll be too busy at all party conferences.
15:35Should the ball come loose at the back of the scrub?
15:38Yes. Not for me, probably. But it's going to be on the 8th of October. And the bit I think
15:43is
15:44most interesting, too, is there's this scrabble for the youth vote. So Hobart and St. Pancras is
15:50very, very young. Something quite surprising, like 50% of the residents are between 18 and 34. So
15:58this is the ultimate kind of fight. Andy versus Zach, who owns the youth? We shall see.
16:04It'll be really interesting to see who they pick. I think that's what, that's basically
16:08when we'll start to know how this is going to go.
16:10Yeah.
16:13Last time we were together in this lovely room, in our last episode, Cleo, you said that you
16:17thought Kemi Badenock needed to do a reshuffle. You never guessed what happened.
16:22I know.
16:22She did one.
16:23I just love it. Maybe she's listening to us.
16:26Why don't you give it a go? Say some other stuff.
16:27I mean, it was due. It was due. So she did just take everybody's advice, I think. But
16:31she managed to do a sweeping reshuffle, a really, really good one. And this is largely triggered
16:38by James Cleverley stepping down as the shadow housing community secretary to have a run as
16:44mayor of London.
16:45I'm quite excited about that, actually. I think that's going to be an interesting contest to
16:49watch.
16:49Yeah. Shaving it up to be a good fight. Stick with us for that, for a non-by-election, but
16:54still very exciting. And so she had this opportunity really to do quite a restructuring.
17:01So I just want to tell you who the key appointments are first, and then we can just do a
17:05kind of
17:06art of the reshuffle chat because it was well done.
17:10So now we have Andrew Griffith as shadow chancellor. So he has this lengthy career at Sky where he
17:17was, I think, CFO and COO. And he was Boris Johnson's business advisor whilst I worked in
17:25Downing Street. So I got to know him a little bit then for a couple of months because then
17:30he became an MP in that 2019 general election. He's very interested in business. He's quite
17:38forthright on the economy, particularly on markets. He is, however, a key architect of
17:45the Liz Truss mini budget. And listeners might recall that didn't go very well.
17:51I'm not sure he'll be burnishing that on his CV.
17:54In John Healy's speech yesterday, he did actually reference this, that the economy is still
17:58suffering from Liz Truss's mini budget.
18:01I mean, it's the gift that keeps on giving for Labour chancellors is to be able to keep
18:03on throwing back to that.
18:04It is. I mean, I'm not saying they're doing a terrific job of stewarding the economy, but
18:08it is a major thing to point to. And it's hard because Kemi Badenock and quite a few of
18:14her, well, previous cabinet anyway, and certainly Andrew Griffith now, were part of that government.
18:19Yeah, she's made it harder by swapping Mel Stride, who was the previous shadow chancellor
18:23for Andrew Griffith, because his fingers weren't completely on it in the way that Andrew Griffith
18:27definitely were.
18:27Quite. The other interesting replacement is Dame Priti Patel has stepped down as foreign
18:32secretary and we've got Tom Tugendhat instead. Big China hawk. I think he's actually been
18:39on the list of MPs who have been targeted by the Chinese state and are banned from going
18:45to China. I don't think that bothers him.
18:46Very serious person.
18:47Very serious person. And actually quite a good foil against Ed Miliband, I think, because...
18:52He's sort of the anti-Ed Miliband, actually.
18:54He is, but I think he's quite witty and he's personable. And I think Miliband would rather
19:02have Priti Patel in some ways, someone who he can say, you know, you're a Brexiteer and
19:08you're, you know, wanging on about global Britain and this kind of stuff. Tom Tugendhat's a bit
19:13more elegant and a bit more David Miliband-y, I think.
19:17It's going to be triggering for Ed. I mean, I think I'm saying this very carefully because
19:21actually it really irritates me when people say that Priti Patel's not smart because she
19:26is actually very smart. But it is true to say that Tom Tugendhat will be more in the kind
19:31of intellectual framing of the way that Ed Miliband likes to engage with the world.
19:36Yes, I think that's true. Katie Lamb, who is a sort of Tory rising star, she only got
19:40elected in 2024 in Kent. She has become the Shadow Housing and Community Secretary. So
19:46she's replaced James Cleverley. And she has a long career at Goldman Sachs. And she was
19:51also a Conservative special advisor whilst we were in government. She worked in number 10
19:56doing business with Andrew Griffith, actually. So I think that's a key ally for him in the Shadow
20:02Cabinet. And she worked at the Home Office under Suella Braveman. She has flown, I think
20:08it's safe to say, quite close to the wind with her comments since becoming an MP. And actually
20:14she, you know, this time last year, she was being talked up as the rising star in the party
20:20potentially to take over from Kemi Badenoch, who at the time was floundering quite badly.
20:26Maybe it would be a Katie Lamb, Robert Jenrick pairing, that sort of thing. And then she did
20:31a Sunday Times interview around party conference that, that was extremely hardline on immigration.
20:38And although she was actually parroting party policy, it turns out the rest of the party hadn't
20:43really understood what they were signed up for. And that's surprising. So she's had this
20:48sort of period stepping, but being less sort of in the front face.
20:53It's a bit of a keep your enemies close-ish. And also talent, right?
20:56Yes, she's talented. And it'll be interesting to see her versus Angela Rayner, for sure.
21:00I do want to come back to some of the comments, because her migration comments and what she said
21:04on housing, I think are deeply problematic. But we'll come back to that.
21:07Yes, well, I think we'll be doing quite a lot of housing this autumn.
21:10Hell yes.
21:11You love it. And I just love all the classy ladies around it. So that's just fine.
21:16So Claire Coutinho, Shadow Business Secretary, she has been up against Ed Miliband for the
21:21last couple of years. She's going to have a second child. And she, you know, she was
21:26a key SUNAC ally. So she's done quite well to sort of stay in.
21:30She's very impressive, is Claire.
21:31Very impressive, is Claire.
21:33Did you notice the Harriet Harman comment on her appointment?
21:37Yeah, I thought that was...
21:38That was a good old sigh there.
21:39It wasn't great from Harriet.
21:40So what happened was, I think probably on a podcast, so obviously we are very complimentary
21:44about all podcasts.
21:46Another lady podcast.
21:47Another lady podcast.
21:48A lady podcast. Who listens to that?
21:52So she said something that Kemi Badenock had made a woke move by appointing somebody who
21:58was on maternity leave to, or basically promoting her, and that she never thought she'd see the
22:03day. Now, partly, I think Harriet Harman is rightly quite grumpy about the fact that on any
22:10measure, the Conservatives are just better at having women in more senior roles than the Labour
22:15Party. And you can't fudge that at all. To describe it as woke, though, was just like,
22:20it was sort of a perfect thing where just everybody got to play in their lane. So Harriet Harman said
22:25it was
22:26woke. And then obviously Claire Coutinho and the chair of the Conservative Party went
22:31absolutely crackers and did a whole kind of, it's not woke at all. It's just about putting the best
22:34person in the job and how dare you assume I've just been judged in this way because I'm a woman.
22:39And yeah, everybody had a good old fashioned fight about it.
22:42Yeah, everyone. Yeah, they back to school, good old knees up. But actually, it's also just
22:47necessary. They don't have that many MPs to choose from. And Claire is really experienced and really
22:51talented.
22:52There's no doubt she's been promoted because she's good, not because she's pregnant.
22:56And then there's just some other fun bits and bobs. Harriet Cross, who's a real rising star.
23:00She's now the Scotland secretary.
23:01I thought that was a really interesting appointment.
23:03Yeah, yeah. And she has another interesting job, like energy security, something like that.
23:08She's...
23:08That's appropriate for Scotland.
23:09It is, exactly. So it's actually a bit of good joined up thinking.
23:13The other thing I'd noticed that Damien Hines is back. So he is now the shadow health secretary.
23:19He's formidable. So I remember him from, I think he was in the May government. And then he was in
23:23the
23:23Johnson government. He's a very, very impressive minister. He was, I mean, this might be the damning of
23:29the poor guy, but he was definitely seen by civil servants as an extremely competent secretary of
23:35state.
23:35And he'd been chiefly in education, hadn't he?
23:37He was, but he was, but during the Brexit days, when everybody was like chipping in with
23:41help, his help was actually genuinely helpful. And the then cabinet secretary, Mark Sedwell,
23:48was a particular fan of his as well. He was a really good chap.
23:53Welcome back.
23:53It was a very beautifully handled reshuffle. So Mel Stride and Priti Patel, who effectively
23:59were left jobless by the outcome of the reshuffle, were, I think, deliberately given the opportunity
24:04to tell their own story and say that first. And then Kevin Badenock was incredibly complimentary
24:10about them both afterwards. So as kind of terms of elegance factor, I'd give that a nine.
24:15Yeah. Ointment on bruises. It was really perfectly done. And guess what? Nobody's now sitting on
24:21the conservative backbench is feeling cross.
24:24Well, that was as far as we know.
24:25Or they're not going out straight away and causing problems. Do you remember when Andy
24:30Burnham came in, he did his reshuffle, he immediately had Darren Jones criticising
24:35pledges that he was going to make. And, you know, what Burnham, what we're about to get
24:40onto is how school's back. Burnham is not governed yet with parliament sitting and how MP handling,
24:47it is tricky and it takes up a lot more time and headspace than you'd like.
24:52So do you think it's going to make any difference, this reshuffle?
24:54Well, seeing as I advise they do it, definitely. I do think, how can it make things worse?
25:02What they need is energy. And people like Andrew Griffith and Katie Lam, they've certainly got
25:06energy and they can match Kemi Badenock. She's here, she's there, she's everywhere, but she's
25:10only one woman. The thing they have to nail though is what are they going to use these
25:16people for? It's great to have this energy, but you have to have a strategy you need to
25:20put into place. And I suspect in the next few weeks, we'll see where target areas are for
25:26the Conservatives and what their target messages are. And I would be very, very interested to
25:32see what these people have to say at their party conferences and the various markers of
25:37which they're improving. Because the big challenge to the Conservatives is they are
25:44electorally dead in a lot of parts of the country and they are polling at less than their vote share
25:50from the 2024 general election. That is the challenge. People are really important, but a plan
25:56is now the next important step. Do you know what jumps out to me from that list is scrutiny. So
26:02when
26:02you think about those people, this is why I would be really worried if I was looking at this list
26:06from a government perspective. That list of people are heavy hitters, big thinkers, incredibly good
26:13at politics.
26:14And they are not vibes.
26:15They're not vibes at all. They are detail and forensic questions. So I think the Burnham government
26:21has already run into a bit of trouble in are they actually competent enough and organized enough and
26:27sort of worried enough to be ready for what's coming at them in terms of questions. And they're going
26:34to get that in spades from those people. Never mind what we know about the outfit that has been
26:38very brilliantly supporting Kemi Badenock in this last year to kind of really turn the screw on
26:43government ministers.
26:44Yes. And also, these are quite kind of canny political operatives in the sort of traditional
26:50parliamentary sense. And that is perhaps where Burnham's team have got their biggest weakness
26:54because they have this massive parliamentary majority. That isn't really a blessing. That's a lot
27:00of sheep to sort of herd and manage. And the sheep don't want to play ball. They don't want to
27:04become lamb chops or whatever. And so some of his sort of cross-party consensus, inviting people in,
27:11I don't know whether some cross-party MPs will feel that inclined in a few months' time,
27:17if they feel emboldened, that they feel their team is doing better, whether they'll want to sort of
27:21collaborate with the prime minister and his team. And also, if the conservators are really smart,
27:26they will find ways to cause problems for Burnham with his MP management, which I do think is one of
27:33his blind spots. And they've got nothing else to do, right? The problem for government ministers is
27:36they're trying to actually do things that are making a difference in the actual country. And
27:40the luxury of opposition is your only real job is to make the other guys look stupid and try and
27:46help that people are like you as a result of that. I mean, it's not, it's their full time.
27:49Perfectly encapsulated by this reshuffle. A reshuffle in opposition is just a hundred times easier.
27:54Dreamy. Dreamy. Absolutely dreamy. So, should we start with a negative about,
27:59why don't we start on the downside? Let's start with a negative about Andy Burnham's new government
28:03over the summer, because there are signs that, you know, the outfit is perhaps not
28:07firing on all cylinders yet. Now, we should be forgiving of that. It's early days.
28:12Yeah. And obviously, Keir Starmer this time last year would have been extremely happy if this had
28:16been his summer. Oh my goodness. But there is the sort of poster child for what's not worked that
28:21brilliantly this summer has been the Farrago over the early release of prisoners scheme. So,
28:26you'll remember that in 2024, when the Labour government came in, this was one of the issues
28:32that was already flashing red. It was flashing red when Rishi Sunak was leaving office that
28:37prisons were at full capacity, as in there was no space to put prisoners. We haven't been building
28:42enough prisons for years. There's lots of systemic reasons. We've been giving people higher sentences
28:46and not making sure the supply was there. There's lots of good kind of bad government reasons why
28:50we've ended up here, but ended up here we have. Then what happened was, obviously,
28:55Keir Starmer's government had to come up with a plan for what they were going to do to effectively
28:59release pressure from prisons, which is about letting people out before their sentences expired,
29:05which is an incredibly controversial and difficult thing to do, bearing in mind that hardly anybody
29:10serves their full sentence anyway. Yes. And it's a very difficult political thing to do. So, but they
29:16had made all the decisions. This was going ahead. Andy Burnham comes in. And the timing was such
29:22that it was about to be the kind of next phase of telling victims of crime that their prisoner that
29:29had committed the crime was going to be released, which again is one of the things that's difficult.
29:32And people remember that PC Andrew Harper's family were informed in this, and he was the police
29:36officer that was killed in the line of duty. In fact, there was a law brought in after he died
29:42and about having a proper sentence when you kill a member of the police or one of these kind of
29:48frontline workers in the line of duty like that. And it's incredibly emotive. People know that story
29:53so well. And he was on that list. Yes. So what happened over the summer, you're absolutely right,
30:00is that the families, particularly PC Harper's family, but also to be fair to them campaigning
30:05for other families too. It was never just about them. We're saying this wasn't acceptable. People were
30:10worried about people who'd been sentenced to crimes of domestic violence or of sexual assault or
30:16sexual abuse, all kind of being released because of basically bureaucratic incompetence. So this
30:21isn't anyone's fault other than that we've not managed the state well enough to be able to have
30:26enough prisons for people who should be in prison. So it's kind of no one's fault and everyone's fault,
30:30and it's particularly hard for victims of crime. And what happened is in that kind of great haze of
30:35coming into office, Andy Burnham said, don't worry, I've got this.
30:39I'm not having that.
30:39Not having it. I've got it. I'm going to review it. And then they sort of bungled the review.
30:43They called it into Downing Street. They obviously discovered how difficult it is. And I'm in no
30:49way saying there was an easy answer to any of these things. Then sent a bunch of ministers out
30:54in the first week of August to say, well, we've looked at it, but actually, we can't fix the
30:58problem. We fixed the problem on people who have committed sexual assault crimes. We haven't fixed
31:04the problem on PC Harper's family. At the time, I did a bit of media. And I think the thing
31:08that
31:08bothered me the most then and bothers me the most now is that what the poor ministers have been
31:13sent out to say was effectively, there's nothing we can do about it, which is, as you know, well,
31:19one of the things that drives me around the bend about government ministers, there is definitely
31:24something you can do about it. You might be choosing not to. But there's definitely something
31:28you can do about it. So I thought that was bad handling. And sort of bad handling to assume a
31:34problem to yourself as prime minister, which has its risks, right? Because it's like, normally,
31:39prime ministers learn quite quickly that sometimes you should leave problems with the Secretary of
31:43State who's in charge of it. Yes. And think, that looks a bit tricky. We've discussed this before.
31:47You can't resist saying, I, Andy Burnham will solve this. And he didn't solve it. So if you're
31:52going to take that to yourself, at least solve it. And then there's a bit of back and forth over
31:56the
31:56summer. And then finally, in a way that then annoyed a whole different set of people, they announced at
32:00the end of the summer before Parliament was back that they had, in fact, found a fix, which at the
32:05least
32:05keeps the killers of P.C. Harper still in prison. The thing for me is this is like signs of
32:11that new
32:13number 10 not quite being in gear because you don't let your boss say that he can fix something.
32:19And then once he said he's going to fix something, you damn sure make sure it's fixed.
32:23Well, and because he's a good front man, I think Andy Burnham did do a good job. You saw him
32:28pop up
32:29at various points over the summer saying, I'm as frustrated as you are. This isn't what I want.
32:34I'm going to find a way to solve this. But it is a theme that he likes to say something
32:41perhaps
32:42politically expedient or very ambitious. And I'm not saying he doesn't mean these things, but
32:47he says it and he says, I'm going to solve it. And then there's a bit of like coming up
32:52against
32:53reality because guess what? The reason other governments haven't managed to do this is not
32:58because they didn't want to, because it is actually quite hard and there are trade-offs and
33:01all these things are more complicated than you think.
33:05Yeah. And it's an interesting mindset question, I think. So if I think back to working in the
33:10coalition government in the center for the then cabinet secretary, Jeremy Hayward and coalition
33:15government was tricky, right? Because it was by definition, you're trying to manage and work for
33:19two parties. But one thing that David Cameron was really clear on is that when he took something to
33:25him, like we all had to fix it. So you can't do that sort of persistent and necessary day-to
33:32-day
33:33radicalism, changing the system, fighting the fight, and everybody love you. You have to be quite hard
33:39inside the machine. So you don't kind of, you are going to annoy secretaries of state, you are going to
33:45drive the system really hard. And you do have to do it all day and every day. It's that you,
33:50every decision stacks up to making change happen. And if people wanted it to be, like your default
33:58is, it's the way it is because people are making lots of choices about it being that way today.
34:02And if you want it to be different, you really, really, really have to push back persistently
34:06all the time. And that isn't compatible with being nice and believing that you're a good person and
34:11everything is going to be great because just your radiant loveliness is going to somehow change the
34:16world. Because in the kind of nitty gritty arguments in government, it doesn't.
34:20I wanted to draw listeners attention to, I don't think I need to draw yours to it, Helen, which was
34:26this fascinating little snippet I saw about power and specifically central power. And I think it's a
34:32clue for some of the confusion for me about how Andy Burnham might want to run things going forward.
34:38So listen to this. Andy Burnham is planning to strengthen his grip on Whitehall by giving the
34:44Cabinet Secretary legal powers to direct and overrule the officials who run government departments.
34:50Helen, Penny, for your thoughts.
34:53It's just hard to work out who advised him. That was a good idea.
34:56This was a report in the Times. And I have been trying to find out what it's actually talking about.
35:00Old fashioned person I am. What is the plan here? And I asked some esteemed colleagues in the
35:07Institute for Government if they knew what this was about. And it turns out they're not sure either.
35:11I mean, to be clear, the Cabinet Secretary is the most powerful civil servant in the country,
35:15and she's already the boss of the civil servants in these departments. So I don't know what legal
35:21framework she would need to overrule them beyond, oi, this is what I'm telling you to do.
35:28She's not a person short of power, put it that way. But if she's decided that she needs a law
35:33as well,
35:34then, you know, good for her, I guess. And it's kind of most extreme example. This is a total,
35:41again, total changing of our constitution, because it would be saying that the person who's accountable
35:47to the Prime Minister alone, can direct civil servants who are supposed to be accountable to
35:53their own Secretaries of State, to do what she wants them to do, rather than their accountability
35:59being through the Secretary of State. I don't think it's probably as radical as it is sounding.
36:05I think it's completely unnecessary. So it can't be the case that the Cabinet Secretary can't get
36:13civil servants working in other departments to do what she wants them to do. So she's their boss.
36:20She's responsible for all of the talent and reward for everybody who works for them.
36:25She's responsible for what happens. She's responsible for their next job.
36:29She's responsible for their performance appraisal this year. She's responsible for
36:34pretty much everything that makes their lives good or bad. So I'm not sure what additional power
36:39is necessary there, unless it is to overrule what their ministers want them to do,
36:45in which case that is a bad and wrong thing and shouldn't happen because your loyalty as a civil
36:50servant, your accountability as a civil servant, your job as a civil servant is to serve the
36:54minister of the Crown that you work for. And it's not unusual for there to be some difference
36:59of opinion between ministers in different departments. And it's quite important as a
37:04civil servant to be really clear about where your boss is. And sometimes that goes deeply
37:07wrong for you, because I've had this in the past, you know, the Cabinet Secretary is saying
37:11to you, well, this isn't okay, it needs to be like this. And you're saying, well, I can't
37:14do anything about it, I'm afraid. Your boss needs to talk to my boss, because I've got to do
37:18what my boss wants.
37:19Do you remember, again, one of the last conversations we had before going away for
37:24the summer, I said that one of the big attack lines I thought would be, or at least one of
37:30the debates that inside the Conservatives or reform perhaps they might be having about
37:34Andy Burnham and Labour is whether to criticise him as continuity starmer and more of the same,
37:39or scary and new and dangerous and doing radical things that are not welcome either. And interestingly,
37:49that debate seems to be happening, but it's happening within the Labour Party instead.
37:54So, John Healy has been in a bit of hot water in the last couple of weeks, because he initially
37:59said, he was very, he did an interview and he was incredibly complimentary about Rachel
38:04Reeves and Keir Starmer and said, you know, this is continuity Labour, we had a manifesto,
38:09we're going to stick with those pledges. And then, because that came, brought into question
38:15what he was going to say about defence, because that had been a resigning issue for him and
38:19three percent of GDP was critical. Suddenly, a week later, he said, but obviously, you know,
38:25the Prime Minister and I are lockstep on defence and I've already told our NATO allies that this is
38:29something we're going to do and I'm going to have to think of some radical changes to
38:34make this happen. And playing all these different sides at once and trying to solve
38:41all these problems is fine if you have quite a clear idea of who you are. And are you willing
38:45to genuinely kind of move fast and break things and do things differently? Or are you essentially
38:52doing what quite a lot of Labour MPs thought they were getting by backing Andy Burnham, which is
38:58you're Keir Starmer, but you're a better salesman. So you're going to do all the things we want,
39:02but you're just going to package it up a bit better.
39:05So I think there are two things that I will tell me that we're a bit more in,
39:08they actually are going to make change happen. So one of those is John Healy said in his speech
39:14this week, his growth is a good thing. And he had to make it having just got the news from
39:18Jaguar Land Rover that they were sacking 4,000 people. So not great.
39:22I mean, not great. And that always happens to chancellors. There's some kind of special magic
39:26that happens around the timing of a chancellor's speech. But what I thought was interesting about
39:30the things that he said were, it was very radical on the reducing the burden on business and
39:34regulation, something quite a very strong commitment that a quarter of the burden on
39:40business will be reduced by the next election, which is not very far away and quite a lot.
39:45There was a lot about innovation and there was a little kind of sense of what you might be seeing.
39:52Do you remember we made a commitment to the percentage of GDP that will be spent on development
39:58aid? The actual real life practical consequence of this was a lot of conversations within Whitehall
40:03about how can we classify this spending as being part of development. And you can see the
40:08beginnings of how can we classify rebuilding our manufacturing base as defense spending.
40:14Yes.
40:15And I think part of me, you know, I like one of those little reasons. So part of me
40:18admires that. And it's also, it's also true, like, defense has to be a whole system thing.
40:23It's about actually how resilient are we as a country? It's not just how many drones are we
40:28buying. It's what's our capability in terms of our people, our geography, our natural resources,
40:34all of these things come together. But I can just see the shadows of like, oh, hang on a second,
40:38you're beginning to build this argument that you will get closer to a percentage when
40:42somebody in the army with a uniform and lots of pips will be like, hang on a second,
40:46that's not defense. So I thought that was interesting. And the other thing that I think
40:50is quite interesting on kind of, are they actually going to make radical change happen,
40:53is there was this extraordinary statement put out from the cabinet about devolution. What's
40:59interesting about it is it's basically saying that you genuinely are going to devolve decision
41:02making to different regions. Now you can have an argument about what does that really mean?
41:07And is that democratically accountable? And those are arguments I would like to have,
41:10because I do think there's a democracy problem somewhere within this, and that we need to make
41:14sure that thread is there. But the natural conclusion of it is a huge change for Whitehall. So if you
41:20say to
41:21places where actually you should decide where your sports funding goes, where your arts funding goes,
41:25you've kind of reverse abolished the sports body, the sport England, you've reversed abolished the
41:31Arts Council, you've reversed abolished a whole load of Whitehall mechanisms, systems, decision making.
41:38And I think that is going to be a really interesting question that are they really going to follow it
41:43to its logical conclusion, and make the saving, which is has to be, you have to cut the thing in
41:48the
41:48centre that is doing the thing that you're devolved, because then it will happen. Are you brave enough
41:53to really carry that through? Because if you're not, nothing's going to change.
41:57If anything, it's doubly expensive, because we'll just sort of have both.
42:01You're paying twice. And going back to like, the system is like it is, and our governing system is
42:06like it is. And people have worked in it for a long time, and they've not been doing that because
42:11they think they're trying to do a bad thing. They believe that their whole way of operating is about
42:15serving the state and making the state work. If your new boss says to you, everything you've
42:20been doing is de facto wrong. That's, that's quite a challenge to turn those people who've
42:26spent their whole, I'm talking about the civil service here, their whole working life working
42:29in one pattern, that what they now need to do is rethink and work in a completely different way.
42:34And by the way, you're now working for this council over here and helping them to rethink things.
42:40It's a, nobody should underestimate the kind of scale of change, scale of change if you take
42:45them at their word. Well, one of the things I noticed in that cabinet statement, which came
42:49out on the 31st of July, was that I think Andy Burnham listens to us too. It's not just Kenny
42:55Bagnon,
42:55because a few days before that, you'd been saying he should be looking at places like Cornwall,
43:00who want their own devolution settlement, and they do not have a metro mayor, so it doesn't
43:05quite fit in with the pattern of working he'd been suggesting. And since then,
43:10there've been all these kind of interesting flurry of Cornwall mentions coming out of Andy
43:15Burnham's mouth. So he's obviously thinking about it quite carefully. He's asked to see all the Cornish
43:19MPs. He's speaking to the Cornish council. He's, he obviously has taken on board what you've had to say.
43:26And I, and I do still wonder about this sort of rural constituency that he needs to think about.
43:32I have seen that the Countryside Alliance are rearing their heads up again. And people might
43:37remember, they organized... They caused a lot of problems for Tony Blair.
43:41They sure did. In the early 2000s, they did this huge march, 500,000 people. It was the biggest
43:47until the Iraq war marches. Also a problem for Tony Blair.
43:50Also a problem. It was a time when people were taken to the streets, that's for sure. And
43:56they're rallying again. So they have said that since 2024, there have been 27 policies that are having
44:01a devastated effect on rural communities. And bearing in mind, Andy Burnham says he wants
44:06growth in every postcode. Well, one in four postcodes are rural. So he does have to have a
44:11bit of a think about how a quarter of his pie is going to be divvied up. But, you know,
44:16aside from
44:16the family farm tax... Quite a lot of those fields, clearly.
44:19Who farms them? Because to your question about security and how the Chancellor could perhaps
44:29podge certain things into defence. The government has said multiple times that food security is
44:35national security. But according to what quite a lot of people living in these communities are saying,
44:41it doesn't feel like that. And there are very specific problems we have now about food coming
44:47up this winter because we've had such a devastating summer that I don't feel like, you know, on a kind
44:53of central national scale we're particularly prepared for. And then, in a kind of electoral way,
44:59is Andy Burnham turning his mind to, as you say, great swathes of fields which are farmed and run by
45:06people. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Remember to follow us on your podcast
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45:39And a special mention to our content editor, Myra Nushka, our video editor,
45:43Vali Raza, and our videographer, Dan Faber. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.