00:00UK this week. The focus will be on Prime Minister Andy Burnham at the annual Labour Party Conference in Liverpool.
00:07The theme for this event is Hope Again, and will mark Burnham's first major event since taking over from Keir
00:12Starmer in July.
00:13Joining us now is Daybreak Europe anchor Caroline Hepburn.
00:15Caroline, great to have you with us. Let's start with this phrase, Hope Again, and help us understand the nuance
00:20of it.
00:21What it is a nod to and sort of what it says about the direction of this party.
00:28Yeah, absolutely. Good morning from Liverpool. Of course, the birthplace of the Beatles.
00:32We're right by the Mersey. And this is going to be the location, Christina and David, of the first address
00:39by this new Labour Party leader, Andy Burnham, to the party faithful.
00:44There's quite a lot of buzz here in Liverpool about this.
00:47The hope, bring back hope, that is going to be the message from the Prime Minister when he speaks to
00:52MPs and councillors and to policy makers.
00:56The idea, though, is to try to build on the vibes, the good vibes that the Prime Minister managed to
01:03deliver over the summer, the increase in consumer and business confidence.
01:07But this is also going to be a real reality check for this Prime Minister.
01:11He wants nothing short of the biggest changes to Britain in four decades.
01:16He wants to sweep aside neoliberalism. He wants to build more council houses.
01:20He wants to reform social care. He said that he wouldn't exclude increasing taxes to try to deliver that.
01:28But this admits what even he has called a challenging budget.
01:31We're only weeks away from the 28th of October when the new Chancellor, John Healy, has to deliver that budget.
01:37And so it's going to be a very difficult line to tread, even as, of course, this new Labour Party
01:44leader has only been in power since July.
01:47We're going to have to see what he delivers.
01:50Caroline, I've been reading some of the comments from Burnham and others leading up to this.
01:53It seems the U.S. is already catching some strays.
01:56You mentioned social care.
01:58Burnham said social care is, quote, as unfair as American health care and could break the NHS.
02:03Can you explain to us what he means by social care?
02:06I'm not quite sure in terms of the health care system what that is and why this is such a
02:09big issue.
02:12Yeah, of course. It's a huge issue because it is care for older people, for vulnerable people, which at the
02:18moment is at the expense, effectively, of most individuals.
02:22So it's very expensive.
02:23It's also leading to problems within the NHS, which is the national health care system within the UK, which, importantly,
02:29is free at the point of access.
02:31So what Andy Burnham wants to deliver, and he says he's going to present this plan ahead of the next
02:36general election, is to try to replicate the NHS, but for elder care.
02:42This would be a massive undertaking.
02:44Some estimates have put it at a cost of £18 billion per year.
02:48There's been a long debate about how to do this.
02:51And also, Andy Burnham is a long-time veteran Labour politician.
02:54He's tried to become prime minister several times before and has failed.
02:57His father passed away in just the past few weeks, and this is very poignant for him.
03:04This is something that he seems to really believe in.
03:06He wants to try to deliver this for the British people.
03:09But again, the question is going to be how to do it when the fiscal position in Britain is so
03:15very, very difficult,
03:16and whether that should be the focus of this administration rather than economic growth or AI or defence spending or
03:23any of the other major challenges for the UK.
03:26Caroline, how much conversation is there about the prospects of the prime minister calling an election?
03:30I look at the polling here.
03:31Favourability, an incredible 46%, I think, of Britain say they have a favourable opinion of the prime minister.
03:38Is that leading to him to make this poll?
03:41What's the calculus he's going through about whether or not to do that?
03:46Yeah, he's ruled out an early election.
03:49I think the debate has been about whether, having changed horses, having changed leaders basically halfway through their term,
03:57whether Andy Burnham has the mandate as prime minister,
04:00and also whether he would have the mandate, for example, to make big changes to taxes and spending if he
04:07were not to go to the polls.
04:08But the prime minister has ruled that out.
04:10It does look as if that seems unlikely.
04:11Exactly. The issue, though, and I think the reason that people here at Liverpool will be so sort of buoyant,
04:18is that Andy Burnham, in his first few weeks in office, has managed to change the polls only slightly.
04:24At the moment, if you look at Ipsos and the YouGov polling,
04:27the Labour Party is just a little bit ahead of reform and the Conservatives led by Kemi Badenow.
04:32But there's not much in it.
04:33And if you look at the really in-depth YouGov polling about if there were an election right away to
04:38happen,
04:38it doesn't look as if the Labour Party would even get a majority in Parliament.
04:43And of course, a couple of years ago, the former leader, Keir Starman, delivered a landslide election victory.
04:49So I do think that it seems that the argument about a swift election may have been put to bed.
04:54But there is still a lot of questions about how Burnham is actually going to deliver
05:01and what he's going to be able to deliver to voters in the UK.
05:04Caroline, before we let you go, I do want to ask you about these reports this morning.
05:08There was an incident at Aria Fairford, which is about 90 minutes outside of London.
05:13What is going on there?
05:14Is there a U.S. Air Force base that had been used to strike some,
05:19to carry out some strikes on Iran, arrest possible bomb threats this morning?
05:23What do we know? And is this over?
05:26Yeah, this could be very significant.
05:29So the police have made several arrests of several men at RAF Fairford,
05:33which is a couple of hundred miles south of Liverpool.
05:36So this is under offences related to the Explosives Act.
05:39Looking at BBC and Sky footage, for example,
05:42it looks as if there is a robot that is examining several vehicles at RAF Fairford.
05:47As you say, this is a very important base because it is where the U.S. has been using bombers
05:53to strike Iran
05:54under an agreement with the UK.
05:56Iran says that those bombers have gone further than the UK agreement.
06:00If this were, and we do not know this yet,
06:03if this were an incident that has been perpetrated by Iran or maybe even Russia,
06:10this would be the first major test, I think, for the Prime Minister internationally, for Andy Burnham.
06:14So the UK police are now investigating.
06:18Several arrests have been made.
06:19The local authorities say that the issue is contained.
06:22Several homes have been evacuated in the area.
06:25All right. Thank you, Caroline.
06:26The timing of that is certainly significant.
06:27Caroline Huffgar joining us from the later priority conference in Liverpool.
06:30We'll see you in the next couple of weeks.
