Prime Minister Andy Burnham - ‘I’m a better politician for having failed.’

0:00Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. This is a very, very special episode. We don't often get politicians who are willing to admit to their mistakes and talk about failure, but today we have someone in an incredibly unique position. Before we get started on this conversation, please do remember to like, follow and subscribe so that you never miss a single episode. Best thing that's ever happened to you financially. Go. Easy. Sold by car on Carvana. Amazing offer. Really? I hit 200 on a scratcher. Did the scratcher come to your house and hand you a check? No. How many scratchers did you hit to get that?

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1:20FX's The Shards premieres August 5th on FX and Hulu. In his first speech as Prime Minister outside Number 10 Downing Street, Andy Burnham promised a new politics of hope, saying it was time to invest in people's success rather than paying for failure. It was a line that could just as accurately reflect his personal trajectory. Born in Liverpool, raised in Cheshire and forged in Manchester, Burnham is the middle of three sons. His father, Roy, was a telephone engineer, his mother, Eileen, a GP's receptionist. He joined the Labour Party as a teenager after watching Boys from the Black Stuff on TV and, encouraged by his English teacher, applied for a place at Cambridge.

2:04He was rejected from his first interview, but was later picked out of the pool by Fitzwilliam College, where he met his wife, Marie France, and graduated with a 2-1 in English. Burnham briefly became a journalist on illustrious titles such as container management, but his heart was always with politics. He got hired first as a researcher before being elected in 2001 under Tony Blair, later becoming a cabinet minister for Gordon Brown and going on to serve in the shadow cabinet under Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn for six years. Burnham ran two failed leadership bids himself before standing down from parliament and being elected mayor of Greater Manchester with 63 % of the vote.

2:46By any metric, Burnham made a success of his mayoral terms, becoming so popular he was nicknamed King of the North. He probably prefers that label to Kemi Baden-Ock's jibe that he was nothing more than a pair of eyelashes and a black t-shirt. Despite once claiming that Westminster makes a fraud of good people, Burnham is now our seventh the Prime Minister in 10 years, having won a decisive by-election in Makerfield and having received nominations from 94 % of Labour MPs in an unopposed leadership contest. So, third time lucky. Still, as Burnham said in 2022, I never relax. I always feel I'm having to prove myself.

3:32There's never a sense of, I'm here, I've arrived. Prime Minister, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. That was a very fair introduction. I'm glad. But surely, is there a sense that you have now arrived? I never feel like that in any job. And I get the sense that if you do, you're not in the right frame of mind, because you've always got to prove yourself, haven't you? You've always got to challenge yourself to prove people who doubt you wrong. I mean, I always carry that sense with me. I don't think that will ever change. Well, I think that's the opposite of entitlement, which is precisely what we need right now.

4:11Yeah, there's not much entitlement here. I've always had a bit of that imposter syndrome that many people from these parts and other parts of the country carry with them. You walk in somewhere, your first job or going to university, as you said, always struggled and waited for the tap on the shoulder. And it took a long time for that sense to leave me. But eventually you get beyond that. But even now, I still have that feeling of, no, I need to show the people who don't think I can do this that I can do this. And I've got that feeling right now in this job. But I've got the bit between my teeth.

4:50And actually, I go into this job probably differently than anyone before, a bit more like when I went in as mayor of Greater Manchester. I learned there just to be myself. I knew the city. I knew the people. Right. I'll just be myself in this job. I was free from Westminster. And I'm carrying that forward now back to Westminster to say, you know what? All of you down here with the way you do things and your strange ways. Well, I'm going to come in and carry a bit of Manchester back in here and show you there's a better way of doing politics. And it's why we're recording this in Number 10 North, so it's a joy to be here for the first time.

5:25You are my first ever Prime Minister on How to Fail, and I am incredibly grateful. We've got close in the past, but most politicians run scared of doing a podcast with the word fail in the title. Why did you decide to do it? because life's a journey and mine certainly has been and you have to be prepared to understand why if you've not succeeded at a particular moment well why didn't that happen and what am I going to do about it how do I make myself better from that experience and I've definitely done that throughout my political career because I've always had that degree of self-doubt or you know am I good enough but I think that's a healthy thing actually and it can uh make you somebody who is prepared to sort of reflect and learn and come back come back stronger I think probably in any walk of life people who do that probably are more likely to stick around and you know be there for the longer haul um yeah not everything has gone right in my in my journey but I've always you know taking the moment to think to challenge myself and you know really kind of go through it and then understand it and then come back that little bit better.

6:44Love to hear it now not only you the first prime minister who's come on How to Fail you are also the first prime minister who did English at university. First ever? I don't know. I think you are and and I believe the first Catholic Prime Minister? Yes, I think that is true. Boris may have been baptised but never was raised in that way, but I was. I'm not going to claim that I'm the most observant, but once you are one, you're always one when it comes to Catholicism. You can't shake it out of view and I definitely would be in that space and it shaped my views you know when I was at school I'm old enough to remember something called the catechism Catholic social teaching you know it was a very big thing in my early days I was an altar boy and I used to have to put the tape on every week at mass on Sunday from Archbishop Derek Warlock who was a big figure in the Catholic church here in the northwest and he would be speaking very much about the 80s and some of the challenges in the inner cities Toxteth Moss Side and then the minor strike and all of that I absorbed all of that and couldn't and still don't actually differentiate faith and politics particularly I think they're all part of the same thing how do you live your life how do you treat other people do you have a care for people at the heart of everything that you do and if you do I think basically you're going to be on the right lines so i've tried to stick to that approach did you ever sneak any communion wine definitely did you yeah you know what we're like you know what any catholic would know we all have that gene within us you know it's a yeah the catholic church i don't know it kind of changes through time but the catholic church of my youth was always quite irreverent quite you know irish in terms of the priests we used to uh come into contact with you know a big emphasis on humor and and it became a bit more judgmental I think in the in the 2000s and I was a big supporter of Pope Francis because I thought he brought back the humor the humanity the slightly live and let live approach that had been lost by his predecessor what about your English degree has that shaped your political outlook I think so.

9:10I had a job to persuade my dad that I should study English at Cambridge. He kept saying, well, what are you going to do with a job like that? As you said at the start, you know, he came from an engineering background. And I kept saying to him, no, I like it. And then I found in a poem I got really interested in by a poet called Tony Harrison, who was a poet from Leeds. And he was quite controversial at the time in the 80s he wrote a poem called v that was on channel four and it was full of swear words but to me my english teacher said you'll like this because you'll relate to it and i put this video on of his poem and i realized for the first time in my life that poetry could have a northern accent and that was quite a thing but i kept pointing my dad back to the quotation at the start of v from arthur scargill no less and this quote said um my dad reads the dictionary every day he says your life depends upon your power to master words so i went to my dad said look article you liked arthur scargill look arthur scargill says this you know doing english is intensely political it's about your power to get your point over and you know communicate well and and I like to think that even though sadly I can't have this conversation with him now I'd like to think that even now he would accept that that was a good choice because I think a power over language and an ability to use language to make your point I think has probably helped me quite a bit in my political career and getting the emotion into what you do and what you say and the connection with people.

10:51We'll talk more about your dad who has Alzheimer's later as it pertains to one of your failures. But let's get into your first failure, which is your failed runs at Labour leadership. I'm so glad that you are going to talk about this. As we said at the beginning, so much of failure is learning, is data acquisition about what to do differently. Do you think now you are Prime Minister, despite those failed leadership runs or because of them? Probably because of them. I became a much better politician in the end for not getting the position at that time because I probably hadn't really thought things through enough.

11:36And the Westminster world puts you on a certain track and makes you think a certain way, speak a certain way even. You quoted that thing that I said about Westminster making a fraud out of good people but it does you've got the whips telling you what to say in interviews and how to vote in the lobbies and it's not about being your authentic self you know it kind of takes people away from that and makes them appear something that they're not and it took me to lose in 2015 decide to come back home here and stand to be the first mayor of greater manchester and then really challenged myself about, well, what do I, when I'm thinking and speaking for myself without any party line, because I didn't, I was quite clear when I left, I was going to do this myself, place first, not party first, do what's right for here.

12:28It really strengthened me, if you like, as a politician. And it would be true of anybody in any organization, isn't it? You know, people at work can think, oh, do I just do what the official line will be this? And do I just stick to that? Or do I stand outside of it and say, oh, you know what? I don't agree with that. I'm going to do something slightly differently. I think anyone who wants to go towards a leadership position in an organization has to hit that moment in their life where they don't just look up and do what they think is expected, but actually then develop the ability to say, you know what?

13:03What they're doing isn't right. I'm going to do it this way. And the fact of losing in 2015 and then coming into this role here made me a million times better as a politician. Are you worried you might lose it again under the pressure of being prime minister? Yes. Okay. Yes, definitely, because the world down there has that effect. It has norms and ways of working, and it expects people to follow that. and anyone who challenges it is seen as an outsider or gets, you know, sneering coverage and gets denigrated in one way or another. So yes, is the answer, but I'm just going to do this job exactly as I've done the job I did here in Manchester.

13:55I've decided actually, and maybe this has come over in the early days, I don't know, I hope so. I'm just being myself, I've relaxed into it. the only way to do it as far as I can tell is to go into it as yourself come over as yourself explain to people what you're doing and why you're doing it and then I think you've got a chance of people connecting with it and saying okay well I'll give this a chance if you're going to go in and do the the Westminster thing then well you know I'll be the there'll soon be an eighth in 11 years if we're not careful. I don't want that obviously to happen. I want to come in and if I can give the country something to tune into, to believe in, to get some hope going and hopefully then some stability that might come from that.

14:44You're focusing on the 2015 leadership bid but there was a previous one in 2010. Was the 2015 one more painful when you lost Jeremy Corbyn? Is that why there's this particular focus on it? Yeah I was very much the outsider and the underdog in the 2010 election and actually probably went fairly well for me because David and Ed Miliband were the sort of you know took all of the story of that contest but it allowed me a space to go over the line of standing in a leadership election which is a hard thing to do but with a bit more freedom to just speak to the things I thought were important so I look back on that as having really helped me and I don't consider it strictly a failure because you know it moved me forward in terms of how I was as a as a politician it was just after I would say the biggest turning point in my political career which was when as culture secretary I went to Anfield on the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster and I'd had to make a choice that day whether I was going to toe the government line or be true to what I knew and the people I'd grown up with which was that there was a major injustice and the whole city of Liverpool had been subject of a slur campaign for 20 years orchestrated from the highest levels of the land and I knew that and I had to decide on that day was I going to toe the line of the government I was in or was I going to challenge it and I did challenge it and things started to change on that issue but it also then changed me as a person and a politician because I realized that in the end I hadn't come in to toe the lines of people in London that I just couldn't possibly the 19 year old me could never have agreed with you know I remember saying at the time if I wasn't the minister at Anfield on that day I would have been shouting at the minister and I knew that I had to reconcile that thing inside of me I did it in hopefully the right way and then I went into that leadership election with a bit of that outsider energy and I think I kind of learned a lot then but that's why 2015 was so painful because I'd become the front runner by the time that leadership election came around and oh my goodness in life when you're the front runner for anything it just I don't know it's hard You know, you're in a more difficult position in a strange way when all the eyes are on you and you're, I don't know, doing what you think everybody wants you to do.

17:17You're listening to advice that you really should reject. And definitely that was me in 2015. How difficult is it to maintain friendships in politics? So you mentioned there that you stood against Miniband in 2010. He's now serving as your foreign secretary. Presumably you had to have a really honest and frank conversation with Keir Starmer when you announced you were going to stand and make a field. How does one maintain these friendships or do you? I do broadly because I don't thrive on personal campaigns against people. I've never done my politics like that. But in the end, it's more than you, isn't it?

17:58You're kind of standing forward to represent a strain of thinking or opinion within the party, to give a voice to more people than you because people are not feeling represented so yes it can get difficult in terms of personal relationships in politics though it will all that will always be baked in that's part of parcel of politics the question is when those difficulties arise and those tensions come up can you find a way of not making them the product of animosity or you know really rancorous sort of relationships and I've I've never done that it was hard earlier this year when I was blocked in terms of standing for the Gorton and Denton by-election but you know I always say what I thought about that but then I carried on working and did events with Keir Starmer after that so politics you have people in politics have to recognize that when things happen they are not necessarily personal.

18:58They happen because the political moods of the times are shaping things and people have to accept that. You know, sometimes you're on the wrong side of that thinking and those moods. And I've had to do that in my political career and we all have to do that at times. If you know me, you'll know I love reality TV. I find it's great escapism and just the best way to take my mind off work and chill out. My favourite thing to do after a particularly busy period is to position myself on the sofa with my lovely cat Huxley and watch The Real Housewives. Something that makes this ritual even more enticing is a Lola's blanket.

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20:18After your purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you. Wrap yourself in luxury with Lola Blankets. Evening. Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car? I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyer's rejoice. I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com.

20:59Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have eczema. So I get how it can steal your time. But why let eczema take over when you can talk to your doctor about EBCLIS? EBCLIS Lubricizumab LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies, EBGLYS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids.

21:33Don't use if you are allergic to EBGLYS. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EPCLIS. Before starting EPCLIS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Paid partnership with Lilly. Respect your time. Ask your doctor about EPCLIS and visit ePCLIS.com or call 1-800-LILLY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. What was the conversation like with your wife, Marie France, when you said, listen, I know I've tried twice already to be of the Labour Party, but I've got this plan now to become prime minister.

22:10As a wife myself, I just don't think I could cope with that. I mean, she seems amazing, don't get me wrong, but what have those conversations been like? Oh, goodness me. It's why I kind of find this podcast easy because, you know, she's quite blunt in telling me about my failures in past endeavours and she doesn't hold back. And yeah, there's no soft landing there. Yeah, she was like oh not again they've told you twice they don't want you what are you doing again yeah we know we've always just had honest conversations about it you know she knows why I'm in politics and what I'm trying to do it is about changing the country to make it fairer I know that sounds a bit sort of corny to say that but it's exactly why I'm doing it in the same way that I stood to be mayor of Greater Manchester so she took some persuading to be honest because I guess she didn't want to see me go through it all again and then you know end out on the wrong side and you know at the end of it but she goes gives me good advice the the funny thing everyone laughs at in the early stage of my political career this to give you a flavor of uh the famous Marie France Van Heel as she now as she now is I would be as a young politician I'm talking you know sort of 31 32 when I was elected in in Lee in the early 2000s and I go in and do these interviews and thinking I'd done really well because I had taken the sort of the handout from the whip's office and I'd done an interview where I'd not strayed from the line at all and I would come out and I'd turn my phone on my old you know the old Nokia mobile phones and first uh first text in block capitals uh from uh said person uh would just say answer this is what it would read answer the F star star star ink question this one.

24:00That's amazing. Yeah, well, that's the kind of feedback I've had from her. And yeah, it's probably relevant to this podcast. Oh, I hope she listens to this podcast. It will be up her street for sure. Great. Yeah, she's quite forthright in that. She's Dutch and they don't hold back. They're pretty plain speaking. And yeah, I've been on the receiving end of a lot of that over the years. Well, talking of your wife brings us to your next video where we're going back in time. and it's not being able easily to get a job in the north or at home after you've finished at Cambridge. Can you talk to me a little bit first about the experience of Cambridge and how it felt to you?

24:40So I loved my time at Cambridge. I really did. Loved it. It was, well, it still is a magical place. That's how I felt about it. It was like a land that was so different to here, you know, a sort of blessed place. and I so much wanted to be accepted there that took a while but in the end you know I did feel that I was was accepted and I did well I mean I you know obviously met Mary France there played a lot of football there didn't do the student politics I enjoyed university life to the full and enjoyed the subject and I consider myself really lucky to have gone to Cambridge I'd the chip on the shoulder was there to begin with but it kind of left really as I just understood what an amazing place and what it had to offer was the hard thing was leaving and coming back here that was the hard thing because you've just had a glimpse of a different world and people who've got different connections in their kind of world and their social life and I came back here and it was the summer of 1991 um oh there was loads going on in this city at the time music wise you know it was a great place to be but the reason the music scene was booming was because it had kind of come through into the empty factories and the empty warehouses because the rest of had gone the jobs had gone everything had gone dark you know and the music scene was the thing that kind of was coming through to try and pick the place up.

26:20And I spent months here sending CV after CV, trying to find a job and I just could not find anything. And it sticks in my mind because back to that conversation with my dad, he tried to persuade me to go to Cambridge because I was initially a bit reluctant, you know, thinking I wouldn't fit in, it would be awful. And he was right that I should have applied. But when he was trying to persuade me, he kept saying, oh, when you graduate, all the doors will fly open. You'll have no problem at all. And it wasn't like that. But people I've been at university with who had, let's say, well-connected parents, they were walking into internships at the Times and placements at the BBC and this, that and the other.

27:05And here was me sort of trying to find a foothold in journalism. And there was just nothing. think my first job came in November 1991 but it was unpaid unpaid reporter on the Middleton Guardian in North Manchester and that was where I started and it felt incredibly hard and and tough and in the end I gave up I'd said to everybody who knew me that I wouldn't be moving to London but I then did and there are so many people of my generation born in the northwest in the 1960s or 70s for whom that was what the reality you know if you wanted to get on in life you had to go south but it felt like a failure felt like a big failure actually when I left and took a job on container management as you correctly said it's the reason why I've never been on have I got news for you because I just know they've asked me about 20 times I just know they would make container management the guest publication of the week and they would read out my old articles I couldn't bear the humiliation but those trade publications are absolutely great because I started out as a print journalist and I used to get so many stories from trade publications like that yeah they're great um you you mentioned in the wording of this failure to me your your failure to get a job at home home clearly is an extremely resonant concept for you it's very important yeah what do you think home means home means safety in that you know where you are you know who you're with you just feel supported and secure so I always had that feeling coming home in term time from Cambridge home just meant you're back in your comfort zone and you don't have to worry about being somebody you're not you can just be yourself again and it's been a bit of a theme of my life really when I left Westminster and came back as Mayor of Greater Manchester it felt like being home I often describe walking in my very first morning as Mayor of greater manchester at the greater manchester combined authority and all the people were there clapping when i came in it felt the opposite of going into my first job in a white hall department where you felt half the place was working against you and trying to sort of find you out or trip you up you know it felt very different being back here in in the city when i left when i left westminster and it was definitely a part of my um university days i remember being at home back to hillsborough in the Easter of 1989 in my first year.

29:51And I was at home and I went to the other semifinal on the day of Hillsborough. All my school friends were at the Liverpool game at Hillsborough. And then they came back to the same pub where we'd been the night before, traumatized. And some didn't come back at all. And that never left me that experience. Because then when I went to Cambridge, nobody was even talking about it. or to the extent that they were talking about it, they were blaming the Liverpool supporters. And this kind of idea of Britain as two worlds has always been a sort of feeling and a theme in my life. When I went to Cambridge, it felt like I'd gone to a different world and I would come home to feel that feeling of connection again.

30:34Or when I worked in London in the 90s, I would come home to go and watch Everton. And again, I'd feel like I was connected again. And it was true in my days in Westminster. You know, it was always out of my comfort zone, trying to live in someone else's world and then back here. And I don't know, now I kind of feel I've moved beyond some of that feeling as I go into this role, but it's never left me, this feeling that Britain is two worlds. And if there's a theme that I want to define my time as prime minister, it's making this country not feel like that, not have a sense that some areas are favoured and some are not.

31:12And then the feeling that comes to young people growing up in those areas, That's what Number 10 North is about, getting growth, good growth, going in every postcode, making Whitehall look after Middleton as much as it looks after Marlow in the South. You know, that's what I'm about, really. I've always been about that, and it's why I feel relaxed in this role. I know what I want to do with it. I know what I'm trying to achieve. I know how Britain was when I was growing up. it did feel too much like two worlds power people living parallel lives and that's what i want to change good english degree alliteration there middleton marlow appreciated that for a find a place with an m in the south there very quickly home is resonant for so many of us and i think that so many people struggle to feel that sense of safety that you so eloquently portray there in the UK at the moment, whether they are the victim of a racist attack, whether they are marginalized because they are a trans person.

32:18How are you going to embed this feeling of home? Because I know a lot of people felt so let down and angered by Keir Starmer's statement about the island of strangers. And these are knotty and complicated issues. But I imagine that you want to foster a greater sense of safety for those people to feel at home yeah absolutely I do and the answer is quite a simple one and I started it really on the doorsteps of Makerfield bring back hope bring back a sense of possibility to the country that things aren't in a inevitable decline and that your place isn't shut out of having some good things happen that I think is the best antidote to the negativity and the hate that we see in in places across the uk give people a sense that you know you can do something about the cost of living you can make people's life better you know we can all together feel that things are things are moving forward i think we've lost that feeling i go back to this country at the moment of london 2012 that feeling was there in abundance wasn't it you could kind of almost touch it it was brilliant and yet over that decade or more since then it just drained out of the place didn't it and who knows social media but also the failure of politicians has a big part in it you know politics just wasn't working connecting and then that kind of feeling of hopelessness pessimism seeps in and then you get the division that comes from from that so we've been in that place for a long time now as a country and i don't want to you know be too simplistic about it it's hard to turn that around but i am determined in this role to talk about hope bringing it back giving people a sense that they're being heard listened to we're doing something about it we can be better the place where you live can be better your kids can have better prospects it's why i talk about an education system that balances technical education with academic education for too long goes back to my theme this country has appeared as though it's for some people rather than all people or for some places rather than all places and in education you've got a prime example and I go back actually to the government I was connected to the Blair government we talked about a 50 % target of young people going to university but what did we say to the other 50 percent it was deafening silence there and that i think that approach to politics has been part of the problem it's not felt like it's for people in all places and that parents was okay they're talking about the life chances of my kids not just someone else's kids and i've really you know thought about those things over over the years and that is the way back to it I think a more hopeful country where you know we're not pandering to sentiment that is fostering on social media but actually we're kind of you're saying no no I'm going to do the opposite of that I'm going to stand on your doorstep in Makerfield I'm going to talk about what I'm going to do what I'm about not point scoring against anyone else what positive things I'm going to do to try and change your lives do you know politics Elizabeth just isn't like that.

35:46Everyone spends their time pointing fingers, scoring points, and no wonder it drives people mad. But that creates a negativity then that politicians with more sinister intent sort of feed off that negativity and throw more negativity into the mix. And then we end up in a really bad and divided place. Talking of Tony Blair, I heard him say this thing recently, which really struck me, that in the political climate at the moment, the sensible people aren't radical enough and the radical people aren't sensible enough. How do you combine this big vision that you have with your stated ambition for more devolution, growth in every postcode?

36:26Is there a tension there? There is, but Tony Blair's right about that. I think radical people do need to be more sensible at times and sensible people need to get out of the sort of incremental change and start talking again about how does politics fix the big things so social care you know we perhaps coming on to this i feel that my generation of politicians is guilty of a shameful dereliction of duty political cowardice of the worst kind in saying that this issue is too difficult and we're not going to touch it we're just going to leave it you know this is about basic care of fellow human beings and those who are vulnerable and we're saying that politics can't address that but that's where we got to and we got to it through that normal behavior of Westminster when I put forward an idea in 2010 for a national care service that was branded a death tax and Theresa May came forward and put some forward some proposed a dementia tax that kind of creates a situation where everyone says oh well don't go there but what a failure that is what a failure 30 years since the royal commission on social care barely anything has really changed in fact social care has gone backwards and doesn't that just say something about how politics has really um fallen if you like you know it has to be radical we'd have never created the nhs if we weren't radical as a as a country at times and i think given where we are now you have to have a degree of radicalism to change it I've talked about the 40 years since the 80s I don't think neoliberalism trickle-down economics has been kind to a lot of places across Britain particularly the places that were the industrial centers of Britain I think it's been very unkind to those places actually you go there now and you feel a sense of decline the high street isn't what people would want it to be.

38:29And sometimes in politics, you have to say, I'm going to break out of the kind of consensus and start talking about those things in a different way. And it's what I've started to do. But you have to be sensible about it in terms of what solutions do you bring forward. And you have to be pragmatic about it.

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