Could Farage's by-election plan backfire?

0:03Sky News, the full story first.

0:15Hello and welcome to Electoral Dysfunction with me, Beth Rigby. Me, Ruth Davidson. And me, Harriet Harman. Hello there. We are recording this on Thursday morning and I've just landed back from Ankara. in Turkey where I've been at the NATO summit and I walked into my house at half eleven last night and it is hotter in London. My whole family were just wilted over various pieces of furniture. It's hotter in London than it is in Turkey. I need to go back to Turkey to cool down. That's bonkers, isn't it? And is it a cliche to say that as the weather's hotting up, the politics is totting up even more than you could possibly imagine it to be.

0:58Harriet, look at that link there, eh? Well, let's talk about the politics, shall we? We've got Andy Burnham rolling his pitch to voters and to Labour MPs. We're going to talk about that. And Beth, I hear that Starmer got a gift that was so illegal at the NATO summit that he wasn't, like, he didn't even take it on the plane. He didn't even try and get it back into Britain because it was just like, no, no, no, you cannot get that into Britain. He'd have got arrested at the airport. So say what it is. I'm not going to say. We're going to wait till the end. You've got to listen to the whole episode.

1:24Yeah, it was. He came down to the back of the plane to tell us he was very amused by this. He was very amused. He was laughing away.

1:38honestly it was a very weird trip because it's like we're going through the motions at the moment um but the prime minister is out of office so it was a very uh surreal experience and i did say to him you know i did the pool clip i did this sort of final broadcast pool clip um and i said to him what did you know what did trump say to him he said he he wished me well and he said we'd keep in touch I don't know if they will keep in touch and then at the end I said to him was this quite bittersweet for you because it must have been and he just said no I was like okay he said no and then he just said it had been a real honor to serve his country and a real privilege so it felt like yeah it was a it was a closing of a chapter it must have been rough for him but I tell you what fair play to the guy he put on a really brave face you know he executed his duties he was good humoured and he you know he was a pro but I can't imagine how it must have felt internally it must have been tough.

2:37Oh completely and just like just his family as well because it's such a like we talk about big consuming jobs in politics but being the prime minister I mean it literally leaves you no room for anything it's not a grain of sand extra you can fit in your life so to just have all of that happen and then for it to be taken away from you when you were just beginning to kind of it must take a good year year and a half to even get into the job just because it's just so overwhelming. And, you know, the age that his kids are at, it's quite difficult and all the rest of it, it's a big upheaval for the family to have to kind of move house.

3:10And like the personal toll that it takes, you can kind of justify it if you feel like you're doing something and driving the country forward and you've got some achievements on the board and stuff. But to have it taken away for you before you feel like you even got a proper run at it, that must be hard. It must be really, really hard. I think it's a great privilege though. He's had a great privilege to lead the Labour Party and to be Prime Minister, albeit for a short time. And I don't think, you know, I just when I listen to what you're saying, Ruth, about how difficult it must be for his family, moving house and everything, I just think to myself, well, nobody makes you stand for Parliament.

3:43Nobody makes you be Prime Minister. You choose it and you get the privilege, but you get the downside as well. So, you know, he's master of his own destiny. I did not expect you to be the hardline, tough love approach out the three of us there, Harriet. Yeah, that was not what I was expecting. And also, the two men in his life that have taken up quite a lot of time in his premiership were definitely a lot of his headspace. So Donald Trump was at NATO, that tricky leader to handle. And he was a little bit tricksy. But there was another leader that has been the thorn in the side of Keir Starmer on manoeuvres when he got to NATO.

4:27And that was, of course, Nigel Farage. Because as the plane was in the air, we got a message on Nigel Farage's ex-account saying that he was going to make a statement about his future. So on the plane, everyone spends an hour going, what could it be? No one knew. And some of the journalists said, is he going to quit politics? And I thought, he's not going to quit politics. I've been up close to this guy for a while now. He doesn't look like he's about to throw in the towel. But he did announce, as we got onto the buses to the hotel, so we were all in a convoy watching Nigel Farage live and then end up at the top of the hotel on a balcony doing a live story.

5:11I hadn't even put my case in my room. but he announced he was going to resign as MP for Clacton and trigger a by-election which he's framing as the people versus the establishment and he did this because he said he has done nothing wrong. He says he's been unfairly treated over taking donations from very rich people before he became an MP. Then he announces in the midst of these two investigations, he's going to resign his seat and let the people judge him. Yeah, well, so I have to say, first of all, just to kind of catch up with where we are, because it all happened quite fast. So we had like a Sunday Times expose about this George Cottrell, Gifts in Kind, which donations and Gifts in Kind also count and their monetary value would count.

6:05So it was staying at a big, posh rented house quite a bit close to parliament. It was security personnel. It was staffing, people that were going to do nice videos of him for social media and fix all of that. So it was substantial value to this sort of stuff. And as you say, George Cottrell convicted of wire fraud in the United States. No way Farage could say he didn't know about it because, as I understand it, he was huckled at the airport while he was there with Farage and he spent some time in a penitentiary over there. But in terms of it then moving very fast, we got from the Sunday announcement, you got all of these reform MPs that were sent on the television to say nothing to see here.

6:51This is an establishment stitch up. Everyone's piling on Farage and it's not very fair. Boo hoo hoo. And I did think to myself more than once, did Robert Jenrick really think it was worth changing parties to just act as a human shield for Nigel Farage every time he goes on television. This is not like David Davis when he resigned and stood again in his own seat on a point of principle about sort of human rights. This is not when Zach Goldsmith resigned his seat and stood again because he'd gone from being a conservative to an independent and he thought his constituents deserved the right to make a decision because, you know, they had voted for a party and he was no longer of that party.

7:24So it was a principle. This was a guy who basically has said, I don't like playing by the same rules as everybody else. Therefore, I'm going to quit and I'm going to frame this. It's kind of like a, if he wins, he wins. And if he loses, he wins. Because if he loses the seat and he's not back in parliament, then parliamentary investigations into whether he broke rules stop. If he wins the seat, no matter what then comes out in future, he gets to stand up and say, oh, well, we put it to the people of Clacton and they don't care. So stop asking me these hard questions. And we've seen how uncomfortable he is with these questions.

7:59And I think it is glorious that the other parties aren't standing and he's going to spend the summer fighting a bin. I think it is absolutely glorious. Harriet, you are our resident expert on all things to do with standards. It seems to me, as Ruth was just saying, that Nigel Farage has almost decided to, as I said in my report, try to take back some control of his predicament in that he's jumping before he's potentially going to get pushed just explain the rules to us and why you might be doing that well the rules the parliamentary rules have been built up over the years in response to scandals where people have seen mps take money and then vote in a particular way or ask questions of ministers in a particular away or make speeches, not because they think it's the right thing to do or because their constituents want them to do it, but because they've been bought by people giving them large amounts of money.

8:59So these rules have been built up, which don't say you can't take the money, but they say that if you take money from people, you've got to register it so that your voters can know who is paying you. These rules are to protect people from the establishment in the form of hugely wealthy people buying MPs and corrupting our system. So it's to keep our politics clean and democratic so that it's the voters who have sway, not just people, because they've got large amounts of money to give away. What he's trying to do by calling this by-election is he's trying to set the people of Clacton and their decision to set that above of the decision of the Standards Committee, which is the committee which will decide whether or not he's complied with the rules or breached the rules.

9:52And actually, the people of Clacton have got an absolute right to decide who their MP is. But the people of Clacton do not have the right, and they're not going to be getting the evidence or doing the deliberation about whether or not he's breached the parliamentary rules. I'm going to cut in here, Harriet, just to ask you just to put the stage in the middle, because part of Farage's saying is that other politicians from other parties are ganging up on him. And while the committee's made up of parliamentarians from all parties, there is a stage before that. There's an independent standards commissioner who gathers the evidence and gives it to the committee, isn't it?

10:27So it's not as if it's just the committee doing stuff to be mean to Farage. They've got a duty to kind of uphold what the independent guy recommends to them and then look at the sanction. Or have I got that wrong? Because I didn't serve in the Commons. But you did and you chaired that committee. So you know much more about this than me. But that was my understanding. Well, that's absolutely right. There's the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, which is Daniel Greenberg, who is very experienced indeed and extremely independent and has never had any sort of political activity. So he is the one that will carry out the investigation.

11:02And then he will report to the Standards Committee. The Standards committee is made up of seven members of parliament, but it's also got seven independent members on it who are picked because they're people who've been involved in regulation and they're completely independent from politics. So, you know, the system is as good as it can be made to be. And it's got a very important purpose, which is to make MPs be open and honest about the money they're receiving. So then Farage tries to put the people of Clapton, set them up against the Standards Committee by announcing he's going to resign and cause a by-election.

11:43And immediately that poses a challenge for all the other parties. What should they do about that? Firstly, should the government, who's got the power in this respect, refuse to let him do it? Because he's taking the mick. I mean, this is not a sort of proper process, as Roo said. he's just it's a stunt so should the government because they've got the power to not let him take this uh resignation route should they stop him and they obviously decided that although it was totally wrong for him to do it and it is a stunt that it would just play into his hands to stop him do it so they've decided to let him resign and cause a by-election then they have to decide are we going to stand candidates in this by-election are we going to treat it as a proper parliamentary competition and stand candidates.

12:31And one by one, the parties, Labour, Tories, Lib Dem, Greens, all decided that they wouldn't stand a candidate because it wasn't really a proper process, except for Count Binface, who was standing next to Andy Burnham in the Makerfield by-election. Do you remember? I did think... I hope the fox is going to stand as well. But, you know, I did think it was quite odd because, you know, when there was the Makerfield by-election and literally the eyes of the world on it. And I thought, are Andy Burnham's people going to make sure he stands between a Liberal and a Conservative? Surely they're not going to let him stand next to Count Binface.

13:11It's alphabetical. When the whole of, but they could have arranged with the return. It's alphabetical. No, they could have arranged. Count Binface, Andy Burnham. But they could have arranged. Anyway, they didn't. So the first person whose hand was shaken by Andy Burnham after he won that amazing Makeville by-election was Count Binface. Is it Binface, Count, and then Burnham, Andy? Because they probably would have been next to each other on the ballot. Honestly, it's alphabetical. I love it. I should say, the reason I keep saying Fox, and you might be going, is Andy Burnham was between a Fox, a candidate dressed up as a Fox.

13:51I do wonder what people in other parts of the world make of this. Someone said to me, it's like, it's a brave man that gets between a fox and a bin. So anyway, it's rather descended into farce because none of the other parties are standing candidates but count bin face in. And his manifesto, he's been asked, what is your manifesto? And his manifesto is this, I am not Nigel Farah. But if he gets re-elected in this Clacton by-election, which is likely to be in August, and who on earth wants a by-election in August anyway, especially an unnecessary by-election. Then what will happen is the commissioner will continue with the investigation that's already underway and will be suspended during the period of the by-election.

14:33And then there's every chance that there will be another by-election next year in Clacton if the Standards Committee recommend and if the Standards Commissioner says he's breached the rules And if the Standards Committee recommend a penalty of suspension from Parliament of over 10 days, then there's an opportunity for the Clacton residents to do a recall petition, which triggers another by-election. And I think that that is what is likely to happen. And in that case, the parties will have to stand candidates because that will be a proper by-election. Keep up at the back, everyone. Are you following?

15:10I don't give Rachel Reeves much credit of writing a dry line of humour, but she put out a tweet saying, because it's the Chancellor that says whether somebody can resign the House of Commons or not, they have to apply to resign, said that she absolutely would let him resign. She'd let him resign immediately, because if he wants to spend the summer shouting at a bin, who was she to stop him? I did think it was quite funny, I have to say. I mean, what Nigel Farage did was he doesn't hold a news conference in which he makes an announcement and takes questions. Of course he doesn't. He live streams this from Reform HQ.

15:43And then we as broadcasters have to take a decision on whether to run that or not, because it's normally we send our own cameras to things. We have broadcast pools. So the broadcasters send cameras. So it helps us make sure it's independent. and normally you would expect some scrutiny but in this case I think we decided it was of significance enough to run it live but it was fascinating in the few sort of hours afterwards because what happened was probably what he didn't expect to happen which was everyone called his bluff so first all the parties came out and said it was a gimmick and a stunt and then they began to come out and said, you know what, actually it was Rupert Lowe of Restore who did it first.

16:29And was really good about the way he framed it, to be honest with you. He was properly good politics there. Yeah, he said, we will fight Nigel Farage in a by-election, but we will fight him in the second by-election, the by-election we think he will have to face over breaking parliamentary rules. And then everyone came in. And actually, interestingly, Nigel Farage has done one interview around this with the mail. He was asked about whether he'd been wrong-footed. Did he think he'd be the only proper candidate? Sorry, Count Binface. Did he think he'd be the only candidate? And he said, of course not.

17:06And then now he's framing it as, this is to quote Nigel Farge, I'm asking for an endorsement of me as a person and our agenda for change. But Binface, His odds have gone from 50 to 1 to 5 to 1 overnight on the booking odds. When I asked some of my reform sources about whether they'd had a bit of regret about this gamble that they've taken, they insist that they feel confident that they are in the right place. And then they said that Labour and Tories are admitting by not standing they can't beat Nigel Farage. I don't think in any way that he gamed this out. The premise was, if you don't re-elect me in Clacton, this whole sort of overturning the tables in the temple, this upending of the current order, which is failing Britain, according to him, is all going to go away and it's going to go back to cosy consensus, two-party politics, and we'll have missed this golden moment.

18:05this man who has i looked it up um he has over 20 years experience as an elected mep he's been in frontline politics for 33 years from when he founded his first political party he spent 11 years as the leader of ukip in a couple of sessions two years as the leader of the brexit party five and a bit years as the leader of reform uk again in two different stints so he spent over 15 years as a party leader, over 33 years in frontline politics and over 20 years in elected politician. And he's saying he's not the establishment guy. But if you run him against a bin, suddenly you can't do that. And while you were talking to your reform sources, Beth, our wonderful producer managed to get on the phone to the man himself, Count Binface.

18:54And we can hear from Count Binface as to why he's standing and what he's going to be running on. Let's hear it. Greetings, electoral dysfunction. Camp Inphase here, intergalactic space warrior. And I'm speaking to you from my starship, the Albarata, which is now parked nicely in orbit, just on the far side of your moon. Nice to know there aren't any Artemis crafts getting in the way right now. So here I am. And you want to know why I'm standing in Crackton? Well, I tell you what, your podcast says it all. electoral dysfunction. This is it in a nutshell. You've got a sitting MP, or he was, calling a by-election when he didn't need to at the cost of 348 grand to the British taxpayer when he might have to fight another one all over again.

19:43I call that insane, more insane than him having to face a recyclon alien at the ballot box. So, you know, I think it's just about the sweet spot for a big face campaign, which is saying something because I just don't make appeals against Andy Burnham. I was hoping to put my space boots up, but hey, you know, no rest for the wicked. So I'm back. I'm interested. And, you know, if the good people of Clacton decide that they would like me to stand, well, who knows? Maybe we'll have Mano Abino. We shall see. I look forward to seeing you guys on the Hustings. Keep up the great work. Lots of love. Benny.

20:26There you have it, Count Binface. And I should say on the cost of it all, the independent newspaper put the figure at£275 ,000 based on the confirmed spend on the 2014 Clacton by-election plus 12 years of inflation. Nigel Farge says reform told the local council in Clacton that it would cover the cost of this by-election. But that's simply not allowed under electoral law. I don't even need to tell you why. Parties cannot pay for a buy election. They have to be independent. So obviously, you know, so the taxpayer is going to have to foot the bill for this. But look, let's just take a thought experiment and try and look at it from, because you've both spoken clearly about how it could backfire that the parliamentary standards investigation carries on, as you said, Harriet.

21:20One thing, Ruth, though, is that what it does do is it does give the microphone back to Nigel Farage. We've been talking a lot, haven't we, about how he is a media performer. He wants to do press conferences. He likes to be on the stage. Last summer, reform had a whole summer of campaigning, which obviously the Tories, we talked about this, Ruth, were in despair because they were like, why is it that the conservatives are allowing reform to do all the running? and I think Labour politicians were annoyed with the government about that too. I think that's going to be different this summer. I think the Tories have upped their game in terms of how they've learned to be in opposition and also they can deal with national issues, whereas actually Farage is going to be slightly hamstrung and he's going to have to talk about Clacton quite a bit.

22:07What's been interesting in recent days is reform and reform outriders, his allies, people at the top of the party, they have used this declaration by Farage to go on the attack. I think the question that you asked Harriet about, could it work this idea that he's being set upon, that he's having more scrutiny than everybody else, that he's being attacked, that everyone's ganging up on him, because he's always set himself apart as an outsider in politics. And that outsider role in lots of countries around the world has a lot of potency right now. Part of the statement that Farage made was about media harassment, But also he talked about how endangered he is as a politician and explaining why he needed the security that this Harbourn money was paying for.

22:55So he's putting the media there clearly in with the establishment. We only know that Nigel Farage was taking these huge amounts of money because the press investigated and found out and exposed this. And Nigel Farage clearly doesn't like accountability. But if you put yourself in the public domain, which he's done by being the leader of a party, if you get ahead in the polls and you're putting yourself forward as prime minister, you can expect and the country should expect that there is proper scrutiny of you and you are accountable for what you're doing. So most of what he's doing is he's just complaining because he doesn't want the scrutiny that rightly should come if you are in a senior position in public life and trying to be prime minister.

23:48Hi, producer Laura here. We'll get back to this episode of electoral dysfunction in a moment, but I'm just interrupting the podcast to remind you about our new members club. You will have heard Beth Ruth and Harriet talk about Sky News Insider a lot lately. It's$2.99 a month and you get an extra episode from us every Tuesday. You might have seen already that Jess Phillips is back. She's back on the podcast with some of those members-only episodes. As part of your subscription, you will also get these Friday episodes completely ad-free. And if you listen to our sister podcast, Trump 100, or if you're interested in our new Sky News podcast, Stuff Matters, with Ed Conway, you can get ad-free listening and bonus episodes to both of those shows too.

24:24It's all in the same bundle as your ED member subscription. description you'll also get access to a host of new ways to interact directly with beth ruth harriet jess and us the team who make the podcast terms and conditions apply you can only become an insider if you're over the age of 18 and if you're in the uk subscription auto renews at the regular price unless cancelled via my account cancel anytime effective at the end of the billing period okay that's enough from me back to beth ruth and harriet right but look let's move on so nigel Farage wants to be the Prime Minister. The person who is about to be the Prime Minister is Andy Burnham.

25:02And as I'm speaking, MPs today are nominating for the leader. And Wes Streeton says that Andy Burnham now has 81 nominations, so he can officially stand breaking news. I mean, look, Andy Burnham's about to be the Prime Minister in a couple of weeks' time. And he sent Labour MPs an email on Wednesday. We're beginning to get a bit more now of in the black box of Andy Burnham. It's like a sort of black box in which we don't know what's in it really, apart from that speech and some bits and pieces. But he has written to MPs and he's beginning to sort of set out the contours of how he wants to lead.

25:42He says he wants a broad church of ministers. He wants to stop legislation being just presented to them as a fait accompli. And he will change the whip's office so it's something that MPs do not fear. And he also talked a lot about being in the voting lobbies. He was going to be present. He was going to come to parliamentary party events. He's going to come and address the women's PLP. He said he's going to make sure that his ministers engage with select committee chairs and MPs around policy. He says that it's going to be a party of all the talents. And if you bring experience from outside into Parliament, he wants to utilise it.

26:20I mean, this is what I call a love bombing of MPs on steroids, man. I needed a lie down afterwards. I was just suffused with love, Andy Burnham love. Well, I think, I mean, it's really a big culture change. And one of the things that he said when he said he wanted to be prime minister is he wanted to do politics differently. And this is exactly what he's done in email. And make no mistake about it, this is a profound change. What he's saying is, this is what I'm going to do as Prime Minister. This is how I expect my ministers to behave. This is what I want the whips to be doing. And this is what I want you as Labour MPs to be doing.

26:57And it's all different. So for example, he's saying, I'm not going to be lurking in number 10. I'm going to be in the division lobby voting alongside side you. I'm going to be not lurking in number 10. I'm going to be attending the weekly meetings of the parliamentary Labour Party. He's saying about his ministers that he expects them to engage with Labour MPs, not to lurk in their departments, but to be listening to the Labour MPs from all different parts of the country about what is going on in their constituencies. That is another big change. In relation to the whips, he's saying, I want you to be listening to and understanding and feeding in the views of MPs, not just beating them with a big stick.

27:40And he's saying to Labour MPs, I want and I'm going to value when I know that you are doing things with communities in your constituencies and doing your constituency casework, which is telling you what's going on the ground. So he's got this different organism now, which is not just ministers sitting in their departments and him sitting in number 10 and issuing edicts from the whips but a kind of bottom-up thing from MPs constituencies right through to number 10 and him as prime minister because he'll be mingling with them on a regular basis and I cannot tell you how different that is from how things work currently.

28:19Ruth just talking about mingling what was this uh what was a little bit of a party last night was a little mingling party tell me tell me. So the 2024 intake and most of the 400 Labour MPs are new and came in in 2024, had a celebration of their two years anniversary. So they were all hot as anything and celebrating together or at least getting together. And this email dropped in the middle of that get together, that social they were having. And really there's a huge relief that he's thinking so hard about what they do and the part they can play. Did they message you? Were they messaging you? Some, well, I was in contact with a few of them.

29:00Were they all happy as Larry? I think most of them were really, really happy. I think a lot of them wish we weren't here and it had worked out better for Starmer. But everybody is hoping and knowing that they have got to make this work. Some of them were just thinking it's absolutely brilliant. Others were more cynical. And some were saying, but yet we still don't have the policy yet. And that, of course, is true. Is he going to be able to make the tough choices on welfare reform? So there's still that. But I think that people thought it was a really, really good first step. You just said there, Harriet, I can't tell you how different that is to what we have now.

29:35What do you mean? Is it being really bad under Keir Starmer? Well, different from Keir Starmer, but also different from previous Labour and Tory administrations. It is very different for the Prime Minister to be not sitting in number 10 with his officials all the time or going abroad and sitting with other heads of state, but to actually be in the division lobby. And one of the arguments for not have remote voting, but to make MPs get out of their seats on the green benches and go into the division lobby, one of the arguments for that is because you will see the prime minister and you'll see ministers in the division lobby, so you can talk to them, you can lobby them.

30:18But actually that hasn't happened for decades. And what Andy Burnham is saying is you will see ministers in the division lobby. You can tell them where they're getting the legislation wrong. You will see me in the division lobby. You can say what I should be saying about an issue which I don't seem to have noticed. And that makes politics much, it flexes the muscle of engagement. I know Ruth thinks I'm just pie in the sky here and totally la la land. I think Ruth thinks you're high on Andy Burnham also. I don't know what she thinks. I don't think you've got a really low bar. Like, I kind of thought that all of your many, many decades of experience meant that you weren't swallowing this absolute vapid bollocks for anything other than it is.

31:00Like, I mean, I just, honestly, so I read this thing and I know that you're going a bit gaga for it, Harriet, but we heard on Tuesday from Jess Phillips, whose office is right opposite the corridor of Andy Burnham's office. She just said that, like, the last two and a half weeks, it's just been like a job centre. this entire email reads like he's written down every complaint that anybody's ever had and has just relayed it back to them so we want a more accessible parliament we want more modern politics we want our ministers and prime minister to be more visible you want people to work in their constituencies more we want the whips office to be loved and not feared let's see whether he does it if he does it it will make a difference can i just you know it's the jury's out as to whether he'll do it but if he does it it will make a difference live on air harriet this idea that he's going to be in the weekly PLP is absolute nonsense because prime ministers actually have a job to do.

31:52So if by 2027, he goes to the weekly PLP more than once a quarter, say, rather than, you know, 52 times a year or however often the parliament sits, I just think it's nonsense. The idea that he's going to stay home and do that instead of go to the G7 or the NATO or like host, you know, the prime minister of India's coming for a state visit or whatever. I think that's a bit extreme. He's not saying he's not going to go to NATO because he's got to go to the weekly meeting of Labour MPs. I don't think he's saying that. You're saying that he's going to be in the division lobby every week. He's going to be in the PLP every week.

32:23He's just not. He's got a job to do. I'm going to come in as the wise sage here because I actually am wearing a sagey sort of colour today. Ruth, I know because I read it as well. I went, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure, as my son would say, sure, sure. But I think where, to give credit, and I think this is what is interesting politically, this is what's interesting. Part of the problem that Keir Starmer had and the sort of slow downfall, which then became very rapid towards the end that he endured, suffered, was because he was not connected with the party. They did try and rule by an iron fist.

33:02They didn't engage. You saw towards the end of his administration, suddenly he's turning up at the women's PLP, having not turned up for nearly two years, etc, etc. And what you can see with Andy Burnham here is he understands that he's got a dissatisfied party that feel that they haven't been engaged with, that actually began to punish the current prime minister very, very bitterly and effectively, you know, with the welfare reforms really being the beginning of the end for Keir Starmer's premiership. And he's trying to get ahead of it. Ruth, I completely agree with you that when you actually are prime minister, the bandwidth for you to pop into the tea room, etc.

33:45is really difficult. But that is also a political choice. It is. I feel sorry for Keir Starmer, though, because we forget that when he became Labour leader, he became Labour leader in April 2020. And the first lockdown hit in March 2020. So he'd had to run during lockdown. He didn't get to meet anybody. He actually was quite a new MP himself then. Yeah, he's not. Yeah. And he didn't, he didn't get the actual physical legal opportunity to have regular meetings with people early on. So it never really developed. And then, as you say, in 2024, the majority of the PLP are new people that have only become MPs since he was prime minister and doing a prime ministerial workload.

34:23So the sense that he was able to build that, you know, the expectation that he could, I think, is quite difficult. But that doesn't take away from all the things I've said about him being a bit crap at politics. But it is that balance between keeping the party happy, but also being able to speak to the country. And one goes with the other. The better Andy Burnham is at speaking to the country and bringing the country with them, the happier the backbenchers are because they're not getting complaints from the constituents. So he can look a bit better than Keir Starmer in sort of contrast, but actually he has to do the prime ministerial bit well and then he'll get less flack that he has to serve as the party more for.

35:00My question to you both is, what will Labour MPs be saying about Burnham in the week before Christmas, Harriet, after he's done a few yards? I think they'll say it feels very different because he's listening to us and he's listening to the country and that's what people want. It'll be a long honeymoon. I think he's going to have a really long honeymoon. It's going to be a year or more because they feel hopeful because they want it to work. They're invested in making this one work. They know they can't change again. This is the last one. So I think he's going to have a really long honeymoon. And actually, if he plays it well, he can do enough low-hanging fruit that everyone then has to behave because by the time he's finished that, he's going into his own manifesto to get his own mandate and then they get behind the manifesto for the election.

35:46There's more hard decisions than there are low-hanging fruit and that's why, in order to get stability, he needs to be including the parliamentary Labour Party, not fighting them. Well, look, we're going to play it back in December and for my part, the thing I would say is I think he's quite a lucky general. 100%. The Straits of Homer's just been closed. Not that lucky. No, with Farage. Fair enough, Rigby, shut up. I was going to say a lucky general in the sense that, yes, I agree with you, the Strait of Hormuz and the re-ignition of the conflict in Iran was dominating NATO and is clearly really, really worrying.

36:22But he has got a situation where reform, which is the thing that spooked Labour MPs so much, is in difficulties, Nigel Farage is in difficulties, and that, as we've discussed, is going to run on and on. And actually some of the reforms Keir Starmer made in those early years of the government are beginning to show some green shoots. You know, the boat crossings have fallen overall. The waiting lists of the NHS having had that multi-billion pound investment are beginning to come down. So it might be that, you know, Andy Burnham can benefit from some of that. And if you give him a big injection of goodwill from Labour MPs, it could be quite promising.

37:05But as I said, I don't want to make any predictions at all because, as you said, Harriet, what the conflict in the Middle East, how that affects energy prices and how that affects our economy, coupled with spending decisions. I think it's very, very difficult to govern in the circumstances that any prime minister finds himself in at the moment. So talking about being lucky or being fortunate, a good fortune can also come in the shape of gifts. But sadly, Kiyostarmer couldn't keep the gift that he was given by the president of Turkey while he was an anchor this weekend. Tell me what it is. We've trailed it.

37:39We've sort of taunted you. We've teased you. But this is kind of mad, isn't it? This is so wild. Let me just enjoy this a bit longer. It was a firearm engraved. Each leader got one. So everyone got a firearm engraved with their name and they had live ammunition. Now, Keir could not bring... What kind of firearm? Well, oh, well, actually, Ruth, I did ask and someone sent me this. I don't understand it, but I'll read it to you. According to the military attache, it was a revolver like a Colt 45. I literally don't know what I'm saying there. So that's like a handgun, but it's one of the ones where the barrel goes round.

38:20You have six bullets that goes in it. And when you fire the shot, you cock the hammer, you fire the shot. It then moves into the next one. So rather than a semi-automatic pistol where you have the magazine that goes in the bottom and then like James Bond and you go... She's our firearms expert, for sure. Yeah, wow. And so anyway, he cannot bring this back to the UK. You can't bring a... Weirdly enough, you can't take on a plane a live gun with a live ammunition. I think weirdly he could have got it on the plane, but he's just not allowed to have it in the United Kingdom because we banned handguns for private citizens here since the mid-90s.

38:57Well, he's had to leave it to be decommissioned in Turkey. So that means that if it's decommissioned, it actually can't fire live ammo. But I have to say, he came up the plane to tell us this and he was really tickled by it. He found this really funny that he'd been given. It's such a strange gift, though. Wouldn't a box of Turkish delight be much easier? I reckon he'd have preferred that. Oh, the other good news, though. Oh, I need to tell you all this because you're going to literally love this. so if England get to the World Cup final I expect that the Prime Minister will announce that there will be a bank holiday if England are victorious I mean I like the difference between England and Scotland because we've already had one just for going so we already had one the first match against Haiti we just had one so look we've got the World Cup final on July the 19th if England get to the final, clearly the Prime Minister will go.

39:57I have graciously offered to do the broadcaster's pool for everyone. So if he needs someone to go with him and ask him some questions, I've told him directly on the plane to his face, I am available. But unfortunately, Robert Peston was sitting there and he said he was also available. Obviously, they're not going to take any of us, so that's that. But then there was talk about whether if we do get to the final, should Andy Burnham go with Keir Starmer like they do a double go-in. Like Stadler and Waldorf, just sitting there. Yeah, they go together. And then their handover of power is on July the 20th.

40:32And then if, if, if England get to the final, if, if, if England win, there would be a bank holiday for the following Friday, July the 24th. But I also had this thought that if England do win the World Cup and Andy Burnham becomes the Prime Minister the next day, no one will care. I mean, no one will be watched. I mean, I'll care. but no one's going to be watching the Tony. He'll get a massive bounce in the poll and perhaps call a general election. They're not going to go on Sky News and now we're going to do rolling coverage of people walking up Downing Street the day after England have won the World Cup for the first time in 60 years, are they?

41:08I'll be at the back of the hour, Harriet. I might as well just not go. That's why you should be Sky Sports. Exactly. Get me on Sky Sports for the day, anyway. Well, look, but we've got to go. That's all from us today. We will be back on Tuesday for our subscribers only episode. And if you'd like to get access to that, then the details are in the show notes. You get exclusive access to Tuesday episodes as part of that package. And you get answers to some of the questions you put in our forum. On that note about talking about the World Cup, on this week's subscriber episode, there is a very comprehensive answer to the question, what can Andy Burnham learn from the leadership skills of Harry Kane, which apparently is worth£2.99 a month in and of itself.

41:49So do get in touch. Burner phone is still always in action. That's 07934 200 444. Or email us at electoral dysfunction at sky.uk. But goodbye for now. Goodbye.