Taming Labour and Facing Down Farage: Steve Richards on Burnham's Plan

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1:32Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. The last few weeks have been kind of spellbinding. Andy Burnham won a by-election, he became an MP, and within weeks of that, he's going to be Prime Minister. We're in an extraordinary period, and because it's moving so fast, you can lose how astonishing it is. Steve Richards, podcaster and UK political commentator. Nigel Farage has definitely been an actor in this Labour drama, hasn't he? Reform have been ahead in opinion polls in Britain for a long time now. And part of his task is to turn that round. I think what he will try and do is become the figure.

2:19All those who want to stop Faraj becoming prime minister feel OK about coalescing around. From Bloomberg Weekend, this is The Michelle Hussain Show. I'm Michelle Hussain.

2:39We did a UK politics episode here a few weeks ago, but so much has happened since that it was time to return. A new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, looks set to soon be seen walking up Downing Street and taking the reins of power. Part of the background to that, the Labour Party deciding to replace its leader midterm, has been the rise of Nigel Farage. And this has been a week when he has again dominated the headlines. There's been scrutiny of his donors, his benefits, his property portfolio. and he has responded to that by calling for a rerun of the contest for his parliamentary seat. So there is a lot happening in British politics right now.

3:24Labour is hoping to look refreshed and revived through bringing in Andy Burnham, someone who was until recently the mayor of one of England's great cities. I interviewed him when he was in that role in Manchester. He talked about his ambition, his responsibilities, his sense of mission. He was very far then from being a national leader. I've been thinking, too, of the change in Keir Starmer's fortunes from the moment that we stood together on a TV debate stage days before the last UK general election, only two years ago. But he had the wind in his sails then. He was the coming man. Taking us through all of this is Steve Richards, longtime political commentator and now podcaster, host of Rock and Roll Politics, a podcast with a loyal army of listeners who he calls the cooperative.

4:24Steve is particularly knowledgeable about Labour politics and leaders. He's the author of many books. Some of them were on the table when he came into the studio. And I've put details in the show notes. and do have a look at bloomberg.com forward slash Michelle because that is where you will find my notes and reflections on each and every episode, including what I read before and after the conversations. And this time with Steve, we begin with his writing and a very early observation of British politics. I'm sure we're going to talk about characters in the present day, one in particular. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

5:07There's a great story that you share about Wilson and seeing him have an egg thrown at him and the way he responded to it. Yeah, it's absolutely, for me, a moment where politics came alive. I was there and I was very young and it was just so exciting. And the effect, it seems to bring him alive. He was so horrific. He looked about 90 and this happened and he changed, came about 30 years younger and the whole mood of the hall changed. And I was about 10 or 11, but I found it fascinating. I can do it with the Harold Wilson impersonation, but it will be lost on most of your audience. Go on, share it with me now though.

5:54So he sort of looked up with this egg down and said, now here we have six months of a Labour government, which goes to show you could only afford to throw eggs under a Labour government. And the whole audience laughed and erupted. And the, as I say, Wilson looked about 50 compared to 90. And it's the humour as a power of leadership. And the presence of mind. And to act quickly. Exactly right. Because he's before the social media era. But hearing you describe that, I can imagine him in the era of being doorstepped with a camera and having... phones in your face all the time. Yeah, exactly. Steve, I wanted to start with the theme of your latest book, Turning Points, because it is about moments of crisis or change.

6:44Some of them are British political crises. Some of them are international, the decision to go to war in Iraq, the pandemic, the global financial crash. But it made me wonder about something relating to now. Technically, what we're about to see is effectively a handover from one Labour prime minister to another. But do you think it could be more than that? Do you think that this transition could actually be a turning point for Britain? I think it could. And it's not automatic. When there is a change of prime minister midterm, the external challenges remain the same. A lot of the government remains the same.

7:22But in this case, the rise of Andy Burnham, it could be, because he has got a very clear agenda for what has gone wrong with the British state and how Britain is governed and how he wants to put it right. Now, if he, and it's a big if, if he implements his plan, this will be a turning point. And no one quite knows in advance how a prime minister is going to perform. But certainly, his ideas partly learned from when he left Westminster many years ago has the potential to be transformative. This great rebalancing of power, the biggest rebalancing of power in British history or recent British history, which he has stated.

8:14Now, we don't have very much detail on that. And I have, and you have much more than me, heard people who are about to lead or want to lead, you know, making these big speeches. I'll reduce welfare spending. I'll build more houses. But you think there is something more fundamental that he wants to do? So one qualification in British politics, quite often, leaders who are about to become prime minister, whatever the context, often claim their big idea is a change in the way power is exercised. I think the difference here is Andy Burnham means it. I think his experience of being a mayor of Greater Manchester, where he saw certainly in transport, the power of local leadership translating into an actual policy development means that he thinks this is a way forward.

9:14And I think he's got views also on the way the British state has become pretty dysfunctional more widely beyond the need to devolve power. He calls it the outsourced state. A lot of Britain is run by unelected agencies and private companies. And the paths of accountability and responsibility are so blurred, it's very hard for a government to get anything done. Now, how he finds the money to deal with this is a huge, huge question. And we're going to dig into all of that, the ideas and how to implement them and what they'll cost. But I want to talk for a moment about how the UK got to this point in time where a prime minister who won a huge majority less than two years ago ends up being booted out by his own party.

10:03Now, you're really plugged into Labour politics in particular. Your son, your son-in-law, both MPs, your daughter is a political advisor too. When did you first start hearing that Starmer was in serious trouble with his own MPs? Well, not from any of them. I find that hard to believe. No, seriously, seriously. They're careful what they tell you in case it ends up on air. Really, really careful. I think they see me as an irritant, to be honest, because I just have my own views. I mean, my view is that he was in trouble from quite early on. Leadership requires sort of titanic qualities. And he came into politics very late and didn't have many of those titanic qualities.

10:53He had a few. Resilience, when he chose to, to have a dogged attention to policy detail. But I don't think he understood how you had to work a government, how to liaise with his MPs who became antagonistic quite early on. Some of them anyway. Should Stalmer ever have been leader of the Labour Party then? What would you give him credit for? Well, on one level, it's fascinating because here is someone who not only led Labour to a victory, but a landslide election victory. And Labour don't win many general elections in Britain. So that was an achievement. There's no doubt about it. And if you step back from all the noise, there were also policy reforms of some considerable significance.

11:46The National Health Service is in a better place now, measurably, than it was. And I think the economy is more stable than it was. But, you know, to be honest, after the 14 years of pretty wild rule, the Liz Truss premiership, the Boris Johnson premiership, I think the anti-Tory mood was set. And he'll hate me for saying this, but the degree to which Keir Starmer brought about that victory is questionable. I think Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and others helped Labour return with that landslide majority. They lost the election. The Conservatives lost the election rather than Labour winning it. He did, however, transform the party in the minds of those who were very against it during the Jeremy Corbyn years.

12:35and that period Andy Burnham sat out because he was running Greater Manchester in that time. Is that an achievement in your view that Starmer did put the party in a position where people who turned against them completely thought? It was partly an achievement and partly a problem. Here's why. The achievement was very quickly he took control of the Labour Party. The Labour Party is really hard to control. And I see Neil Kinnock, who led Labour in the 1980s and really had to change Labour from the doldrums of absolute election slaughters. And Neil Kinnock, I won't use the swear words he put in as well, but he said, how the hell did he do this?

13:19You know, it took Neil Kinnock nine years. Very quickly, Keir Starmer had the levers of power in the Labour Party. However, in the way he became a very authoritarian leader, expelling people who challenged what he and his then chief advisor Morgan McSweeney regarded as the only acceptable route to take, the sort of sacking of various ministers on the so-called soft left of the Labour Party, ended up giving those very victims more power than they've ever possessed before. I remember speaking to him. Some of them ended up being key Andy Burnham supporters. So he made enemies that way. But he would say, wouldn't he, Steve, that he was standing up for principles that after that time under the Tories where it seemed that you could get away with anything as an MP or a minister, he wanted to uphold standards in public life.

14:17And therefore, if people made mistakes, they had to go. I think it was broader than that. So, for example, in the build-up to the election, they blocked certain candidates from standing, not for making mistakes, but for what they believe. And I remember speaking to Keir Starmer about this when he was in opposition. I said to him, because you just end up with a perception of a party that's pretty weird. There is 40 points ahead in the opinion polls, sort of turning in on itself. But his view was, or the view of his advisors was, you get credit for taking on elements of your party. And I'm not sure whether that's the case.

14:57He also would appear blocked Andy Burnham from returning to Parliament earlier than he has. That was for a different reason, of course. Because he didn't want him in Parliament and able to stand against him. And able to stand against him. Which has now come to pass. And which has now come to pass. It is the most extraordinary sequence of recent times. Just a few months ago, Keir Starmer, with an absolute, overt, ruthless determination, went to the meeting of Labour's governing body and personally put the case for blocking him and succeeded because he had complete control of the Labour Party. And yet a few months later, and this was a sign it was over for Keir Starmer.

15:41He was too weak to repeat the exercise. And Andy Burnham, who looked as if there was no route into the House of Commons, found a route. And the last few days, weeks have been kind of spellbinding from he was outside the House of Commons, he won a by-election, he became an MP, and within weeks of that, he's going to be Prime Minister. It's extraordinary. But even the circumstance of that seat becoming available, the one he stood in, was because a Labour MP gave up their seat in order to make way for him, which I haven't seen happen before. It's never happened before. And this MP was a very ambitious MP.

16:22Who presumably will now come back, I imagine. Who will come back in some shape or form, absolutely. There will be a reward for that sacrifice. And what a sacrifice, you know, it's hard work getting a seat and he gave it up. and in a way it was like an episode of sort of faulty towers, you know, where Number 10 and Keir Summer thought, yeah, we've got through it. And then it was announced this MP was standing down for Andy Burnham and that was it. They couldn't block him. In your book, The Prime Minister, you have a very useful checklist for if the country is looking to elect a prime minister, he or she must have the following qualifications.

17:05And the first one you put on the list is he or she must be a political teacher, which I thought teacher was a really interesting word to use here. What do you mean by it? And is Andy Burnham a political teacher? Yeah, a political teacher is absolutely essential because policies erupt around voters all the time. And what many aspiring leaders forget to do is explain why they're doing what they're doing. And more widely, you have to then explain how that policy fits into the rest of your government's policies. and then frame an overall sense of purpose and mission. And teaching can take kind of many different forms.

17:54President Trump is a teacher in his own way. In his mastery of social media? In his hunger to be the main commentator on his own leadership. And so he is an around-the-clock commentator. Now, he does it in a very eccentric way, but he is there explaining what he's doing and why he's doing it all the time. Now, Andy Burnham is a completely different political character, but he too is, I think, a teacher. I say I think because you never wholly know until they get into the position of ultimate power, president, prime minister. But I think he is one of those who is conscious all the time. He needs to be in a never-ending dialogue with voters.

18:49His social media videos are brilliant. Now, it's going to be quite challenging. So devolution, his big theme, is a quite dry topic. So he has to make it exciting. So the big test of his teaching capacity is to come. But the great election winners and those who remain in power for a long time are political teachers. So it's interesting that you think he is that. And obviously, he's had a significant experience in Greater Manchester for nearly a decade. He's grown in that job, no doubt, but it's worth reminding everyone that he ran for the Labour leadership twice before and lost. And you, when you interviewed him a couple of years ago now, you did put this criticism to him that he has been seen as a bit of a shapeshifter, loyal to Tony Blair, loyal to Gordon Brown, not necessarily willing to go up against Jeremy Corbyn.

19:48He had an answer for you. Yeah, I mean, it was quite interesting. He said, I was always to the left of New Labour. This means essentially to the left of Tony Blair. Yeah, yeah. So this is his own definition of who he is and always was. And I have some sympathy with him about this. As you know, there's a joke doing the rounds about someone going into the pub who's a Blairite, a Brownite, a Corbyn Easter. Hello, Andy Burnham. But looking back to that period, there were lots of people who came into Parliament during the Tony Blair period who were ambitious and wanted to get into Tony Blair's government.

20:30And they hadn't always been where Tony Blair was. And they moved with the times and then they moved again. Lots of people do that. So I think probably his self-description of being to the left economically, but small c conservative on issues like crime and immigration is probably an accurate place to start in trying to understand him.

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23:51So let's dig into what he's done in Manchester, his record and the idea that Manchesterism is the new political philosophy that he will bring to the government of the UK, a version of what he's achieved in Manchester. Can you explain it with reference to the buses? What did he do? The terminology is significant. Yeah, the terminology is really significant. And I made a mistake in that interview I did. I said, so you've become much more enthusiastic about public ownership. He uses the term public control. So what happened in Greater Manchester? And it had already begun before he got there. And he's been criticised for that as well.

24:34But I think that's unfair because, you know, it's not his fault that good things were happening. It's how did he adapt to it when he got there? And so the buses were privatized, which meant only the routes that were profitable were run with any kind of regularity. There's trams in Manchester. They were completely disconnected from other transport services. So they connected the whole thing and they regulated. Fares were kept to a minimum. You could have a ticket where you could go from one form of transport, a bus to another, the trams. as happens in London. And I remember the day it all was interconnected.

25:16He did one of his very clever pieces to camera on social media, and it felt exciting. Now, that's not the same as re-nationalisation, because the private sector is still involved. They get a franchise. They get a franchise, but it's regulated and coordinated. And they're forced to go to places which they might not have chosen to go to route-wise, because it wasn't profitable. Exactly. But I think passenger numbers have risen. Passenger numbers have risen. Revenue, therefore, goes up. And it generates growth because people can move around more efficiently. And the key thing, and this is where it works, I think, is these mayors are accountable for this.

25:59So if it had gone wrong, Burnham would have been a disaster area. The fact that it worked meant he was incredibly popular in Greater Manchester. And so it is about how you work with the private sector in different ways. Now, the big test is whether you can extend it across a whole country with different sized conurbations and all of that. And that's a huge question. And not just in transport, in lots of other areas. There's this pamphlet that was released in this critical period a few weeks ago as Labour was mulling a new leader called the Productive State, which I think is known to be an influence.

26:36It comes from a group of MPs, and Andy Burnham's endorsed this position, the Productive State of Framework for Manchesterism, which says that what's been done with buses could be done for water and energy. I mean, the idea is not just to make services better, but also to bring down the cost of living. Again, something that everyone wants to do everywhere in the world. I think what's interesting about this paper, and which I hadn't really thought about in this way till it's spelted out, is that it says that the high cost of essentials in the UK is not just about individual household budgets. It puts pressure on public spending because the welfare state has to cushion the blow of that.

27:16But the money it spends on housing benefit goes to landlords or the money it might spend on energy bills goes to the energy companies. The state ameliorates without ever being permitted to cure directly. this is the fiscal escalator we are trapped on. There's clearly a problem there, but it feels like an immense one to solve. It really does. I think this is what he means by this phrase, the outsourced state. Because how do you, to use another very popular phrase in British politics, take back control or a degree of control? And you're right to suggest or imply that with transport, To some extent, it's easy because the sums involved aren't huge.

28:01I mean, buses are relatively cheap to run. The challenge with something like water is massive because the truth is there has been underinvestment in water since the privatisation and before they were privatised. Where do you think those sums that will be necessary will come from? Because the choice could largely be taxation or it could be borrowing. He has said he will stick to the current government's rules, which limit borrowing for day-to-day spending. So, I mean, what are you expecting? More taxation or more borrowing or a mix? There's going to have to be more taxation. I mean, if you look at what he has been saying, and I think at this point we do have to follow what he has been saying and assume he means it.