Starmer drama on Burnham's first day back at Westminster

0:02The Telegraph.

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1:20After 43 days, Andy Burnham finally addressed Parliament as Prime Minister, and it wasn't worth the wait. I was there and it did not impress. It was more like a local mayor addressing a bus museum than the leader of the nation, with no vision and nothing for his backbenchers to cheer. But at least he was wearing a tie. Welcome to the Daily Tea with me, Tim Stanley. And me, Camilla Tominey. The lobby were waiting with bated breath to see how this messiah of the left would perform in Parliament. And I have to tell you that he sucked. Oh, you were in a bad mood about him this morning. He died on his feet.

1:58Did he? He was terrible. We have a new home, Tim. Mm-hmm. It may look like the same studio. It may look like the same host. It may look like the same time and the same content. But we are now on our very own sparkly new YouTube channel. Yes. And all the details to subscribe. And you must subscribe. You must. It's just one click. It's just so simple. Yeah. And you must do that now. All your friends are doing it. Yes. And so you can find us here on in. Mm-hmm. Tim, we've been up and down into the studio like I was going to use a bad analogy. Let's not do that. But anyway, point is, you can listen to us discussing Starmer standing down as an MP in just a moment.

2:40You can hear about Tim's holiday to Turin. We discuss all thoughts, including what reform leaders would look like if they were Mr. Men. But the point is, the big issue of today, the big moment is Burnham speaks to Parliament at last. The PM has some degree of Westminster accountability thrust upon him with this back to school vibe. The MPs are back. The PM's back. The old PM's out. And you were there to witness the scenes across the despatch box, which you and I have been curious about. How does Kemi Badenok handle the eyelashes? Well, Kemi was wearing her purple dairy milk dress, which always looks very good.

3:18And she opened by pointing out that he's been prime minister for 43 days. that we know a lot about his taste in pork scratchings. We know about his guitar playing, but he's not actually faced the scrutiny of Parliament. And this is the first time. So the lobby were waiting with bated breath to see how this messiah of the left would perform in Parliament. And I have to tell you that he sucked. Oh, you were in a bad mood about him this morning. He died on his feet. Did he? He was terrible. What did you come into the office telling me today? It is such a relief. Hang on a minute. You're basically vindicating your own opinion because you came into the office this morning and you said, I despise this guy.

4:03No, don't tell people that. You're saying I'm just telling, I didn't actually pay attention. I'm just telling you what I want to hear. Well, you were finding him really annoying even before he entered Parliament. No, this was such a relief because for a horrible moment, I thought the left had finally found someone who could sell this country on communism. Yes. But no, he's terrible. He was dry and dull. Even his tie was several shades of grey. Labour MPs looked utterly unmoved. He tried to do that thing of killing opposition and criticism by saying, I just want to work together. It's not about point scoring.

4:38It's about problem solving. But the problem with that is Parliament is based on a law court, right? It's about point scoring. So if you do that, you take away any reason for your side to cheer you. And it meant that more noise was being made by the sarcastic Tories than was being made by Labour. And his pledge not to attack the Tories lasted all of about 10 minutes. Let's have a listen to that exchange. And, Mr Speaker, if I conclude by saying, you know, she raises an ideological point. I noticed yesterday she appointed a new shadow cabinet, the new shadow chancellor. I welcome him to his position too.

5:17I believe the author of the mini-budget.

5:26By the way, it should be pointed out, Tim, that Andrew Griffith did not write the mini-budget. He was in the Treasury at the time, but it was Kwasi Kwarteng who wrote the mini-budget. Exactly. It was incorrect. Well, the attack doesn't even land, but it doesn't particularly matter because the audience at home won't know that. But I doubt many of them will be watching because I can only emphasize that as he gave us his themes, he's going to stand behind Ukraine. He's going to devolve more power. He's going to try to help people with the cost of living. What was really striking was the lack of philosophical vision married to a lack of policy substance.

6:05and he fell back constantly into abstractions. For example, when he took an unexpectedly cruelly question from Ed Davey, he reassured the leader of the Liberal Democrats that there is, quote, a democracy task force operating out of the Cabinet office. Yes. That's the kind of thing that means absolutely nothing to anyone. Well, he said something about a helix at some stage. I wrote it down. OK, this is his triple helix approach to economic development. We will back local industrial strategies, a policy of the Theresa May government I am happy to revive, by identifying priority sectors and developing the triple helix approach to economic development by entwining business, academia and government behind the plan.

6:53This is the way, Mr Speaker, we will build a pro-business culture and an innovation-led economy in all parts of the UK. Also, by the way, I did think it was funny when Ed Davey was speaking, somebody heckled, give me a job, because again, the Liberal Democrat leader, a little bit like with Starmer, wants to be teacher's pet. He wants to be patted on the head, he hands over an apple and then he gets to be put at the front of the class. Because we know this guy is, by the way, hankering, not just for a progressive alliance with Labour, But we read at the weekend, Davey is entertaining a coalition with the Conservatives again.

7:30That's how cravenly power hungry this subtle little man who doesn't really care, he's in politics for all the right reason, is desperately wanting to get close to the keys to number 10. Will anyone in this country take this ugly duckling to the dance? That's what he's asking. Before we get into the substance, I just want to finish up on the point about the star, because this is important, or at least to me. And I'm willing to accept that maybe Burnham's approach came off better on telly, where it might have appeared more emollient and consensus chasing. Fine. But from a parliamentary point of view, it really was a dud.

8:02And it means that your backbenchers do not go in to the very first proper parliamentary day of your government fired up, but rather thinking, what was that all about? In fact, the only person who looked happier at him dying on stage than me was Wes Streeting, who had a big grin on his face, enjoying the shard of Freud that can only be felt by a bitter runner up. Yes. And I really think that what this encapsulates is Burnham has been out of Parliament for around a decade, right? So he's out of the rhythm of speaking in Parliament. OK, that's understood. But what's he been doing? He's been running Manchester.

8:37And frequently during this, he would refer back to Manchester and examples that he can give of Manchester. I mentioned his constant abstraction in his policy. He said at one point to demonstrate what devolution could do, Liverpool has just re-nationalised its buses. Wow. Who cares? Bus drivers in Liverpool. And to be clear, I don't care if Liverpool's buses are owned by the public authority, by a private enterprise or by Dick Van Dyke. Yeah, or the Beatles. I simply don't care. But for some reason, that's very, very important to him. And it struck me this is the kind of speech he might give to a friendly local audience at the People's Museum of Buses.

9:21Yes. In other words, he's still operating psychologically at the level of a regional mayor. He's not stepped up. And part of stepping up is recognizing there's an opposition in front of me. They will pick up any weapon, which Kemi did, and they will hit me with it. I've got to hit them back. Remember, Keir Starmer began in a very similar vein. We talked about government being light on you and all this sort of thing. And we all want to work together and all that sort of nonsense. It's not about points scoring, yada, yada, yada. He ended trying to be really partisan and to fight Labour back. because you'll quickly find that's what Parliament is for.

9:59Sure. Wasn't it actually more akin to the kind of speech you might give at the beginning of an Oasis tribute act to a crowd of people who have had a few beers? I mean, I looked at it on the telly. Obviously, I wasn't there in person, and I take your point about being there versus the small screen appraisal of him, which is often quite positive. Look, he looks quite good. I kind of watched it, cocked my head to the side and went, bless him. the comment desk were asking earlier what do I think of Andy Burnham and my response was I think he lacks substance I think he's indecisive I think he's probably fundamentally a decent guy he's fairly easy on the eye it could be difficult for Kemi Badenock to take him on and then I thought well no actually because she as you said with the dress and everything does school matron school mom sort of puts the glasses on and gives a taste of their own medicine quite well and she was pushed around a bit by Starmer and so I thought oh this is going to be disadvantageous because she won't be able to be horrible and then I thought no actually she probably can be and he's going to find it very difficult to retaliate against her so he attempted the whole Liz Truss thing but let's be honest that's that's as old as Wonderwall being in the charts so we can't use that one and then by the way this reversion back to how all our problems began in the 1980s.

11:21From the 1980s this country took a series of wrong turns. Political power was centralised. Economic power privatised. The country de-industrialised. Austerity followed, hollowing out councils and depriving them of the agency to act to reverse any of this. And then Brexit compounded the damage, ushering in a decade of low growth and stalled regeneration. Change begins with honesty, Mr Speaker. I'm not hearing much of it this afternoon. Unless we are blunt about what went wrong, we won't turn things around. Far from taking back control, the combination of these policies took control out of the hands of communities up and down Britain for 40 years.

12:17Again, so abstract. And as Kemi said, I'm 46. she became prime minister before I was born. Yes. Why are you still talking about her? Thatcher. The irony, Thatcher, the irony being that his policies take us back to the consensus of the 1970s. The year is 2026. Yet the prime minister said in his statement that everything has gone wrong since the 1980s, still complaining about Margaret Thatcher. I am 46. Mr Speaker, I'm 46 years old. I may not look it, but I'm 46 years old. He is talking about a woman who became prime minister before I was born. And of course, at that point, he was delighted. He said, let's have that debate.

13:03Then suddenly he wanted to engage because that is a debate about his past set in his memory, the landscape of his imagination that he can engage with. Well, he was having that debate presumably in Cambridge in the late 80s and 90s or whenever it was that he attended there. but it's on the lefty bingo card along with F Nigel Farage and Free Palestine. I thought she was very good on the early release scheme, pointing out not just his flip-flopping but how damaging that actually was. And she was also quite good in her to and fro on the small boats and whether the numbers have come down or not. Boat crossings have not gone down because of anything that Labour has done.

13:39They have not. We have to be honest. Mr Speaker, boat crossings are down across all of Europe and have been for much longer. Let us be honest, the problem is still not solved. The reality of government, central government, is there are a handful of things you can do. The reality of government is that there are a handful of levers you can pull. You can raise my taxes, you can cut them. You can give me more welfare. you can give me less welfare to incentivise me to go up, get off my bottom and go and get a job. You can spend more, you can spend less. Those are the very simple levers. And because Labour refuses to address the central fiscal question of our time, which is we're running out of money and borrowing ourself into a brick wall while we splash cash on welfare and don't invest in the one thing we do now desperately need, which is defence.

14:38because Labour doesn't want to address that. It's trying to find a way around those levers by coming up with a whole new paradigm, a whole new way of thinking about the national economy. A helix. A helix, if you will, which means that by devolving power somehow to, I don't know, Truro, you're going to create loads of jobs. Give the Cornish more powers. It's weird. Devolve powers to the Cornish to say to people who aren't from Cornwall, stop holidaying here. We don't like you. Stop buying second homes. By the way, hasn't he just been slapped in the face by the whole we can circumvent the Treasury narrative with this revelation about John Healy?

15:20Yeah. I mean, if ever you needed a better example of how little control politicians have over the Treasury, just look at the former Defence Secretary who literally resigned because they wouldn't stretch to 3 % of GDP on defence spending, who has now been had to force into the position, the humiliating, embarrassing position of saying, even now I'm Chancellor, when I come out with my autumn budget, I'm not going to be able to commit to the 3 % that I resigned over. I can only set out a pathway to 3%, which, let's be honest, is meaningless. And of course, Kemi Bainock did pick Andy Burnham up on that.

15:55Yes, well, he and he's also still, as she said, got to account for the last two years. You can't just draw a line. But when in his, he did give a little eulogy to Keir Starmer and it stopped at Keir Starmer entering number 10, you'll notice. It was a lifetime dedicated to public service. Well, 11 years in the House. They're probably referring to the whole DPP thing. Yeah, but let's be honest, it's now pretty clear to us that Keir Starmer's two years as prime minister were the equivalent of a career break. His leadership took our party from one of its worst defeats to its best victories and created a platform to change this country for the better.

16:37We will use it well, Mr Speaker, and we wish his family the very best for the future. Right, he's now going to go back to doing what he actually wants to do. So Burnham paid tribute to his public service and then he talked about him winning a landslide majority. And that is the platform on which we will now act. But it's because everyone hated the Tories so much. As if nothing happened in those two years, Burnham said to quote him, Britain is not where anybody would want it to be. Why is that then, mate? Why is it not? Because to go back to those levers, you pulled the one that said raise taxes on business to spend more money on public sector workers and welfare.

17:16They made that decision. And that's why the economy is in the mess it's in now. That's why we've not been growing. and he talked about things like the cost of energy and he put that down to what? Privatisation in the 1980s. Yeah, boring. But we know it's got nothing to do with privatisation in the 1980s. But also he had a go about Brexit as well. Oh, it's all Brexit's fault. Brexit compounded the problem and we have to be honest about that. Well, again, we're reaching the point where Kemi can rightly say that she became Prime Minister before I was born. There are people now in serious positions in Parliament who entered Parliament.

17:51many years after Brexit was voted on. Yes. Are they still going to blame that? Also, isn't there something ironic in how Keir Starmer has announced his resignation today? This is the captain of all flip-flops, literally Count Haviana. And yet he told Henry Zephman, when asked, are you going to stand down as an MP? He said, no, I'm not. And Henry said, really? So you're going to go the distance and you're going to last until the next general election? Yes, I am. So he resigns today, trying to upstage, I think, his successor because he's still angry at the way that he was. Oh, clearly. And he wasn't present, by the way, in the Commons.

18:26Oh, how petulant. So he resides today in the ultimate flip-flop to mark all flip-flops. I mean, it's just extraordinary, this, isn't it? I was chatting to John Rental, the journalist, and he pointed out generously that Tony Blair did leave Parliament pretty soon after being Prime Minister. But we agreed that one had a sense with Blair that he had bigger things to do. Yes. One could imagine there was a job offer on the table. Where in the case of Keir Starmer... Bringing peace in the Middle East, for instance. I don't know if Ryman's is hiring at the moment, but it's hard to imagine that there is something bigger out there for Keir Starmer to do.

19:02But we shall see. Maybe the UN will call. Maybe the intergalactic conspiracy of lizard people, whatever Restore is obsessed with, wants someone to run things. I need some independent legal advice. By the way... Because of human rights in the UK. We do have to mention Nigel Farage, who was looking so tanned that Restore would deport him. Nigel Farage was sworn in and as he walked in there was a sort of a not bothered quality about him here I go again the cheeky chap and Emily Thornberry I would swear on the King James Bible looked at him and went clucking bell or something that rhymes with it shall we have a little listen to his own declaration on the King James Bible I swear by a mighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to his majesty King Charles, his heirs, successors, according to law.

19:52So help me God.

19:57You might be able to pick up there someone from the Lib Dem benches saying, till the next time. Well, we've got another by-election to look forward to in Holborn and St Pancras. And you know the other ironic thing, this by-election could, da-da-da, herald the arrival in Parliament of Zach Polanski, the leader of the Greens. because if you were that party and you appreciated the pro-Palestinian sentiment of its constituents in Holborn and St Pancras, you might have a go against Labour. Yeah. And at the last election, a pro-Gaza independent called Andrew Feinstein ran and got about 19 % of the vote and came second.

20:33I mean, Starmer was still very far ahead, but some people have whispered about Holborn and St Pancras being one that the Gaza independence could pick up. That said, from my little time in Parliament on the first day back, the feeling in the lobby is Labour would win it. Partly because the air has gone out of the Gaza issue. Andy Burnham has said sorry over it. And because that is, as a constituency, it's pretty solidly Labour. It's pretty solidly Labour. And I just don't think the dynamic is there for a Labour loss. Remember, the Greens won Gorton and Denton because the constituency was voting against Keir Starmer and to keep reform out.

21:11That dynamic would not be on the ground in Holborn. Although Graham Pack, our regular correspondent, did make a suggestion. How funny would it be if Labour selected Josh Simons? I thought that was a good point. To run in Keir Starmer's old seat when he is the one that stood down in Makerfield to maketh the King of the North, Andy Burnham. Well, how cynical would that be? And just a final thought in Keir Starmer. This is why people hate politics because politicians lie and say i'm doing this because i want to be a constituency mp oh i'm going to lead a government of service and then we find out that as soon as they lose the top job they go well i'm off yeah so you didn't really care about being a constituency mp i'm going to lead a government of one yeah interested in self-service only there have been plenty of former prime ministers it has to be said they tend to be tories yes who have said uh i'm a parliamentarian i've i've lost but i'm going to hang around and continue to represent my people which Theresa May does.

22:05We all said of Rishi Sunak, he'll be off to California. He's still here. Theresa May's in the Lords now, though. Oh, OK, Theresa May's in the Lords. Yeah, OK, but that's something else he could do. OK, fine. But he didn't want to do that, did he? Sunak, to be fair, everyone said we wouldn't see him on the dust trail left by his Cadillac as he headed off to the San Francisco sunshine. Yes. He's still in Richmond. Yeah, I know. And Ted Heath eventually had to be removed with a crowbar. Also, by the way, the timing on Starmer, could you not have just waited? there could be a snap election as soon as this autumn possibly next spring he just wants out straight away you could have waited till 2028 by elections cost a lot of money yeah they cost quite a lot of inconvenience to your party just sit tight clearly he's got some magic job offer because the language of i want to work on global affairs and i want to work in defense i mean you called it earlier by saying i bet it suggests nato doesn't it head of nato but either way He infamously said when asked, you prefer Westminster or Davos, Davos.

23:03And this just confirms it. He leaves a place that he never really liked. And let's be honest, wasn't very good at. So that's our update. Now let's listen to the rest of the podcast that we recorded earlier today before the eyelashes came down into Parliament.

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25:06It's back to school vibes, isn't it? Yeah, I know. It's so sad, isn't it? I don't know if I like it. I had a kind of feeling this morning, oh God, I've got to get back into the school run this weekend. This weekend, I've got to, you've got to get back to parliament. Yeah, I did everything I used to do before I had to go back to school. watch some Doctor Who, eat some banana bread get your pencil case ready get everything out of the way polish your shoes I know, clean your underwear guess what Andy Burnham did oh, did he perchance jog to Westminster from the north? yes, he's run here from Manchester he's so impressive mascara still intact as he entered SW1 he's been running in his ultra short shorts he's been running in the rain he looked like something out of Chariots of Fire I know, he's admirable I do.

25:51This man embodies our country. He is the new Churchill, isn't he? Because he introduced a work from home by establishing number 10 in the north. And then having done a couple of weeks on the job, he took two weeks off on holiday. And I've not noticed not hearing from him. No. I saw some images of him strumming a guitar at some point. He strummed a guitar in the Ukraine and I believe he stacked some shelves in Sainsbury's with Pat McFadden. Wow. Okay. which could be a reality show on Channel 5, couldn't it? Stacking the shelves with Pat McFadden and Sadiq Khan. It's a bit like Who's Doing the Dishes with Brian McFadden, which was actually a show on Channel 5, I believe.

26:33And we're going to update this podcast later because we haven't heard Andy Burnham address Parliament yet. He's going to do that for the first time in 17 years. Yes. And he's going to spread a message of hope across Britain. Currently, Britain appears to be broken. There's all sorts going on in Middlesbrough. We haven't got any money. Even John Healy can't find the money for defence that he literally resigned over. Something's going on with the guilt yields. Do you have any understanding at all of what guilt yields are? I don't know. I wish they'd find another word for it. Because it makes me think of Catholic guilt.

27:06Yes, indeed. And we've got plenty of that between us. It's not that kind of guilt. The yields on Catholic guilt go up as you get older. It's a guilt without the U in it. So you don't need to be bringing yourself into this or taking it into the confessional. It's a non-U guilt. If only Britain could say three Hail Marys and its guilt yields went away, whatever they are. Also, maybe we could flagellate our way out of our problems in the style of Silas the Monk from what was the Dan Brown book called? Oh, oh, yeah. Come on, we must remember this. It was the only book everyone was reading. Yeah, Robert Langdon.

27:37What? Producers, help us here. The Da Vinci Code. Thank you, Dave. That's right. Honestly, how could we forget? He has a few things in his intray. Small boat crossings. Yes. He'll have to address that. But he thinks they're down, but the trouble is the number of crossings are down, but the boats are bigger and with more people in them. Well, this is the thing. It is the lowest number of seasonal crossings since 2020. Yes. But that still amounts to 7 ,000 crossings. And as you say, I'm guessing the boats are getting bigger. I think only 4 % of illegal migrants have actually been deported. Right.

28:12By the way. So that's not a great stat. Right. OK. And they're all being given granted leave to remain. And at the weekend on my GB News show, I covered that stat that we had produced here at The Telegraph, that because of the Boris rave, which is now coming home to roost, one migrant every minute is granted leave to remain or British citizenship. So this is a genie that even Eyelash McGraw can't put back in the bottle. Such a generous country. So he has to address small crossings. He has to address defence, because don't forget that his chancellor left his job, resigned from the government, which was one of the things that brought down Keir Starmer, over the failure to commit materially to 3%.

28:52Not just saying there's a pathway to it, but actually here's the money that we are going to spend to it. So Healy has now got to explain how he's going to get there, if he's going to get there. Yeah, I mean, he's now Dorothy on the yellow brick road to somewhere. By the way, can I just say this is possibly one explanation for why the public doesn't trust politicians. Yes. I mean, you resign one minute saying, we must commit to 3 % of GDP. And as Defence Secretary, I'm resigning because we are not safe from the Russian threat unless we spend this money. You then elevate yourself to becoming the second most important person in government, which is quite nice for your CV, and turn around to the same public that you decried the state of defence spending to and say, actually, in my budget in autumn, I'm not going to provide for 3 % of GDP because the Treasury says it's quite tricky.

29:43We don't have any dosh. Well, like Gary Hart saying, follow me. I say Google me. And if anyone can find evidence of me having said that John Healy was a man of principle, then I will be very embarrassed by that because I didn't think I said it. And I don't think I thought it at the time. I was very sceptical. The right got very excited for five minutes because they thought they'd found a Labour politician who was willing to fall on his sword for more swords. Yes. But I always suspected this was really about bringing down Keir Starmer and positioning Healy well to replace him. I don't know why conservatives have a thing for John Healy.

30:18So he has to deal with small boats. He has to deal with defence. And of course, he has to deal with the cost of living, which is going to get higher if the Iran war continues. And analysts have warned that in the new year, energy bills could rise by another 9%. So what's he going to do about that? Well, he's already done something, which was to try and remove the VAT from some of them, not realising that they were going up anyway. So do you remember when we kept on being told that we're going to save£300 on our energy bills? Don't know about you, but I haven't seen that, Dosh. Although I'm kind of waiting because my heating, like most people's, is set to a timer.

30:53You know, if the temperature plunges, then the heating will go on. And I have done a double take this weekend because it got a little bit cooler. Right. I thought, are these radiators coming on? You're setting up a timer like that. Why don't you just turn it off? I just turn it off and save batteries for the summer. Because I've got children who complain about being cold and hot. Really? And obviously I'm a kind of put on another jumper and shut up type of mum. Get a hot water bottle, go for a run. I know, but my point is the temperatures haven't dropped that much for our radiators to kick in.

31:19And when they do kick in, I'll probably say this is a stuff of nonsense and turn them off again. But my overriding point is we've been coasting, haven't we, somewhat on a summer of heat waves. No gas energy at least being used, although our electricity bill is always up because the kids are plugging everything in that they own at any given time. My son seems to not understand that he needs to turn off the fan when he isn't in the room, along with the light. But that's my own maternal struggles that I will deal with internally. But obviously, all of this is going to kick in now. It's become colder.

31:48And we're going to note that, no, we haven't got any money off our energy bills, thanks to Ed Miliband and the other net zero zealots in the Department for Energy Security and Climate Change. And in fact, we're going to be spending ever more money. I worry that I'm one of nature's Calvinists because I like pistachio ice cream and I do I do suffer the cold until the very last minute and I like to fling open windows and have fresh air and things like that you're practically aristocratic can you give me this kind of comprehensive boy done good routine but basically you're landed gentry if your solution to everything is to put on more cashmere um shall we talk about the reshuffle that no one's talking about yeah No, hang on.

32:29Kemi had the masterstroke of doing it on a bank holiday Monday. Yes. Reshuffling the Tory shadow cabinet on a day when there was nothing happening. True. So it did get a lot of headlines. You got a bit of traction. I thought it was quite well done. All right, well, let me just do a little test. Okay. Oh, no. This is like, what is the capital of Burundi? I know. Who is the shadow industry spokesman? Who was the shadow chancellor? Oh, it was lovely Mel Stride. Who is the shadow chancellor now? It is now Andrew Griffith. Do you, could you pick... That's without an S. Could you pick Andrew Griffith out of a line-up?

33:04I've seen Andrew in several line-ups. No, I could. I actually do know who Andrew Griffith is, yes. He looks like if Roger Hargreaves did a bank manager stroke chancellor, it would look like Andrew Griffith. It would. Like black hair at the sides, bald head, black suit, possibly carrying a bowler hat and an umbrella and a briefcase right yes and on that note do you remember that you said when we were discussing the fact that we had received a lovely card from linda i love that card depicting us as a little miss chatterbox and mr i can't remember what you were depicted as it's just so nice to receive a car that doesn't contain a threat or a dead bird or statistics on climate change anyway so uh you said wouldn't it be great if somebody came up with mr men equivalents for all of the political parties in the uk somebody's only gone and done it very good bex davidson has come up with and we're going to flash these on screen but i'm just going to show them to you how good at this this is little miss green in a headscarf it should be a kefir by the way and with a uh pint of lager with a no sign across screaming and screaming until she's sick.

34:16Exactly. We love this one. Mr Reform in a Union Jack bowtie carrying a pint with a little smirk on his face. I love that. Obviously true blue because they were all once Tories. Mr Labour disappointed, frustrated, red and wearing a European flag. Yes, shrugging his shoulders. What do I do? Very good. This is genius because it encapsulates the clown-like nature of the leader and some of its main policies. It's the Lib Dems. He's a yellow, round man hanging upside down on a string with red tape wrapped around him. Very good. My favourite. But he's enjoying himself. Enjoying himself. My favourite because it's a homage to Maggie's Twinset and Pearls.

35:01It's a little Miss Tory. Isn't that interesting that that's still the shorthand for Tory? But I think not only is it good for the Tories, I think it actually looks like Katie Lamb. It does. Physically resembles Katie Lamb. And she's just being given a promotion because she is taking James Cleverley's role. Yes. James Cleverley was Shadow Community Secretary, so Angela Rayne is equivalent. He's gone off to try and be the next mayor of London. That's right. He's not actually been selected by the Tories, but he's going to run. He hopes he's going to be selected and then run against Sadiq Khan and Leila Cunningham from Reform.

35:33So perhaps have a discussion about that in a moment. Before we do, though, this is a good one. Our co-host. she's also done little mr mug in a double-breasted suit with a little hat on and his spectacles he's very square and everything's perfect isn't it everything's very good and a bowler hat and it's very good yes that's a that's a man i would trust with my money indeed so to be fair he's made quite a lot of it um james cleverly i mean this was the worst kept secret in tory he wanted to be london i mean i told him that six months ago on my show and he denied it makes sense it does make sense because Kemi's going to be leader for a while.

36:08Yes. He has ambitions in that regard. He did quite well on the last leadership contest. He's a charismatic man. Yeah. It's difficult, though, because the right is going to be split. You know, Leila Cunningham will also garner support in London. But, of course, because of the electoral system, it doesn't matter so much as long as you're the second highest number of votes because you've got to get through to the final round. So, theoretically, that's one where they need to do the fabled crossover, which they've not yet seen in the polls. So, let's see. It'd be funny if he wasn't selected and then he's resigned from the shadow cabinet.

36:37Anyway, and also the reshuffle. So who else can we name here? Well, foreign. Okay. It's very interesting. Dame Priti out. Out goes Priti Patel, who never recovered after an interview in which she defended the Boris wave. Yes. Dame Priti, replaced by a friend of this podcast. Very much so. Tom Tugendut. Close personal friend. Indeed. A rare foreign secretary, if he became that, who could actually speak of the lingo. Indeed. Because he's multilingual. And he is extremely hostile to China, probably a good thing. Extremely hostile to Russia, probably a good thing. He's a very old-fashioned Tory. I can imagine him with a glass of sherry in his hand, talking to a sheikh.

37:12Well, he drinks Earl Grey, which is something I've written about relentlessly. I went to his office once and he served Earl Grey as a default. And I said that wasn't the right thing to do. You serve builder's tea as a default, but you say, I have got Earl Grey or green or whatever. But he'll have picked that up while he was infiltrating a Pashtun tribe during the war. You know, he's that sort of person. I cannot think of a more Tory Tory than Tom Teague. Well, having said that, is he going to be hostile to leading the ECHR? No. Because he was during the leader... But he wrote an article for this very newspaper saying, I'm all for leading the ECHR.

37:44Tom is far more right-wing than people remember. After he dropped out of the leadership candidacy, he backed Liz Truss. That's right. Not Rishi Sunak. Tom is more right-wing than people think. He embodies that ideal of talking to the left, but actually governing to the right. He appeals to centrists, but his instincts are actually very conservative. Griffith was Shadow Business Secretary. He's going to be replaced by a friend to this podcast, Claire Coutinho, who was Shadow Energy. Now on maternity leave. Yes, so she is going to be covered while she's off by Julia Lopez, who is one of Kevin Badenock's closest friends in Cabinet, Shadow Cabinet.

38:21Richard Fuller, you'll have heard of him. He was once the Tory chairman. He now goes to become Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Yeah. Our little friend, pocket-sized Chris Philp, he remains as Shadow Home Secretary. James Cartledge remains as Shadow Defence Secretary. Neil O 'Brien remains as Policy Renewal Minister, Shadow Cabinet. Kevin Hollingrake remains as Conservative Party Chairman. All of the rest of them remain, basically. Yeah, well, Katie Lam is in as Shadow Housing Communities and local government and is regarded as one of the rising stars of 2024, as is Nick Timothy, who remains on at Justice.

38:59and their positioning is seen as a win for the right. A key one is Alex Burkhart is deputy leader and will now be standing in for Kemi full time whenever she isn't there because they've been rotating up until now and there have been some amusing successes and failures in doing that. Burkhart is a safe pair of hands and it makes sense to give him that job. Well, he's got legal training and also he is basically her right-hand man. She trusts him implicitly. Yes, so the thinking behind this reshuffles. There are a number of things. One is it's about getting election ready. Second, it's about putting people into position who are fans and friends of Kemi.

39:37It's always the way when you take over a party, you inherit a lot of people and you want to have as broad a tent as possible and you want to keep potential critics happy. So you hand out jobs more to hold the party together. but now that she's been here for about 18 months uh kemi is trying to impose her own personality build up her own power base and that means promoting people who are promoted because of their loyalty to her yes so it looks more like her party and that's reflected in policy as i said the position of people like nick timothy um but also andrew griffith has got a great deal of business experience you know we're all expecting the party to become more sort of small state pro business than it perhaps was when it was in opposition.

40:22But this is not just about campaigning, this is also about planning for government. So what Kemi has done is having had an experience of being in government and finding that ministers become, it's an ugly Westminster word, but siloed, which means that you stay within your department, you don't really talk to anyone else within the cabinet and other departments operate against you. So the classic one is you'll be running business, but the chancellor and the treasury actually calls all the shots on economics. So what's the point of view? And you don't really speak to anyone else. What she wants to do is take these appointments and group them together in groups of twos and threes and so forth.

41:02So that, for example, Andrew Griffith will be grouped together with Claire Cortino and will be grouped together with Richard Fuller so that they operate almost like an umbrella department over chancellor, business and treasury. Yes. That way government is more joined up. And she wants to, so she's going to face down Andy Burnham today and tomorrow. Yeah. She wants to go into that able to say, you've come from outside of government. You don't have a clue how this works. You're not ready. you're not prepared. I've been in government. I know what works and what doesn't work and I'm actually preparing a shadow cabinet that is ready to run the country on day one.

41:47And that contrasts not just with Labour but also with reform. And the Griffiths appointment because he has been extremely successful in business because he was on chairman of the board of Just Eat and before that he was CEO of Sky. He worked at Sky, yeah. And I've been to his Westminster townhouse and it's pretty impressive actually. Is it nice? How much did this cost? Oh, sorry did I say that out loud? So he's done very well for himself also is a bit more of an attack dog than mel stride yeah who let's be honest is a thoroughly nice man but possibly wouldn't ever take the gloves off i mean i repeatedly kept on asking why don't you just call for rachel weese to resign oh well that's not very nice and i thought oh god and um a tory old time of rights which i think this is interesting people don't really understand what opposition is about most of the conservative party has no idea about what they actually have to do um he was just suggesting this as a discussion point for the podcast.

42:35It's interesting to look at successful oppositions and how they went about it. The point is that it is not government. You have little support. You're up against it as a shadow secretary of state. You're having to anticipate what your opposite number is doing and you're often failing to get any coverage for what you're saying. It's almost the war of the flea, which I think is a very good point. You could be flailing about. So actually you want to maximise publicity, not least when you're also competing against reform with their own attack lines. And there's currently a kind of war going on between the tories and reform it's slightly exposing how the sausage is made here but it is important about whose line of response to any government policy goes first in any copy so over at the times they'll put the opposition's line of attack first and the tories yeah and they won't count and it's necessarily giving much projection to reform at the mail the the mail is going with the tories we have a look at the line of attack and weigh up which is the best line of attack and we might put in reform first we might have robert jenrich reply to something that john healy's done as much as we might now have andrew griffith reply the sun also does a mix so the tories are having to contend with a a degree of anonymity around anything that they're doing and b that they've got somebody to the right of them also wading in although your point that you made about a united economic team is important because we know that there are tensions between Robert Jenrick and Richard Tice, because Richard Tice wanted to be Reform's shadow chancellor.

44:04Jenrick got the job because they thought he would spook the market. But also, Reform's list is not this long. And all those names, they've only got, what, five positions that have been handed out? That's right. And they're getting criticised for not having a spokesman for defence, not having a spokesman for foreign affairs. They say more will be forthcoming at the conference, which, by the way, you and I are at with bells on Thursday and Friday and we'll be producing podcasts. And Reform can say that we don't have more positions filled because we don't have the MPs. But that's precisely why some in the press go to the Tories first rather than reform because constitutionally, well, they are the ones with the MPs.

44:34You're right. Opposition is entirely about cut through and getting noticed. That's one reason why one key figure who hasn't been moved is Chris Philp, Shadow Home Secretary, who's done a rather good job of showing up in France and having fights. He was famously shot at by the French Navy. So he is achieving something of the cut through that Rob Jenrick enjoyed. That's what they've all got to get. But ultimately, the only person who matters on the shadow front bench is the leader. And is she cutting through? I think she is. But she's very much carrying her party at the moment. And the Tories are anticipating that at some point, perhaps this autumn, as we enter the new school term, they're going to take over reform in the polls.

45:20That's their goal. We'll wait to see if it happens. but it's not happened yet and there's no sign even for a new prime minister even for Labour taking the lead in some polls there's no sign yet of the Tories doing that and we'll be analysing it 5pm as an hour

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