Andy Burnham’s dirty political secret

0:02This is a global production. Manchester City fan, myself. Yeah. Like me, he is blue in football, but true red in his politics. And look, while we're on football, can I just say to all those United fans who've been gloating all week, you're still crap and you know you are. Anyway. That is Lucy Powell, Education Secretary and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, closing the party conference in Liverpool today and making light of a financial scandal the likes of which Britain has never seen before in Manchester, where Manchester City are in deep trouble. That might be unwise in itself, but Lucy Powell has done something else in drawing a connection between Andy Burnham and Manchester City.

0:56Not about the scandal itself, but that they represent what in some ways is Andy Burnham's dirty political secret. His success in Manchester wasn't about control. It was about foreign money. Welcome to the News Agents.

1:18The News Agents. It's John. It's Lewis. And Lucy Powell, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, as we say, making light for a bit of a cheap gag about what is actually, seems to be one of the most serious corruption scandals, certainly in English football, but given that English football is such huge business, might seem a little ill-advised, particularly when you know the details. Yesterday, the Premier League confirmed that an independent commission had found that Manchester City was guilty of serious financial rule breaches covering nine seasons over the course of a decade up to 2018, and most charges are failing even to cooperate with their investigation.

2:04City used sham commercial contracts to inflate revenues and understate costs by more than£900 million, circumventing football's spending rules. Lord Crudders, whose company sponsors Everton, and the former city chairman David Bernstein, are calling for scrutiny beyond football, indeed calling for an investigation potentially into potential criminal charges. Now, this isn't just, I mean, you know, I wouldn't be talking about this if this was obviously just a football story. There are about three billion people on earth. No, actually, wait, seven billion people on earth who are better qualified than me to do that.

2:39But the point is, is that obviously football is so political, not least for two reasons. One, that Manchester City is basically owned by the UAE, by Abu Dhabi, by the state. That is why they've become so successful. They've funneled so much money in. And also, there is a deeply political angle involving our own Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, because he has been a champion of the UAE and their ownership because they have brought so much money and investment into East Manchester and the area around the club. And this is why we're discussing this on the newsagents today, because this is about geopolitics.

3:15It's about economics. It's about the power of a nation and not just about a football club, as you've just said, Lewis, because here you have Andy Burnham, the prime minister of our country, fanatical Everton supporter, which has just been kind of punished by the Premier League for minor indiscretions compared to what we're talking about now and the possibility that the UAE could use its muscle to say to the British government, for God's sake, intervene, because, you know, we invest a huge amount in this country. If you don't help us here, if you don't make some of these charges go away, we could withdraw an awful lot of our investment.

3:56And what does Andy Burnham do there? It really does go into politics very fast the moment you start looking at this in detail. And the aspects It's of it kind of, you know, the possibility, the possibility that there is a criminal element to this even adds to the urgency that goes beyond whether Manchester City face a points deduction. It is how Andy Burnham navigates this. When you listen to his speech yesterday, it was all about how the big guys, the shareholders always win and the customers always lose out. and we've got to rebalance the books. And he's going to face a question soon. Am I going to stand up to the owners of Manchester City if it looks like the Premier League is going to throw the book at them?

4:41And while Andy Burnham was the mayor of Greater Manchester, as I say, he is someone who championed the club for political reasons. We can talk about the reasons for that. But here he is, just to give a flavour of that, talking to Pod Save the UK. And the impact that the Abu Dhabi ownership is having on the wider city the City Council selling swathes of land to the club's owners. Is it something that concerns you? Go to East Manchester now and look at photographs of it 30 years ago. And a large amount of the investment has come in from the owners of Manchester City. So they are more than building a football club.

5:18Abu Dhabi, you know, torture, detention, criminalisation of gay people. You can understand why people are concerned about this, right? Yeah, I hear what people say. I've got to judge what I see in Manchester and how I see the owners run Manchester City and what they do to improve life here. So, you know, those issues obviously are for the government to raise at a different level. They've been huge partners for the city and they've improved a lot of lives here. Yeah, that was in 2023 saying, I'm Manchester Mayor. It may be a matter for the government. Well, Andy Burnham, you are now the government and these are matters for you.

6:01And they have come into incredibly sharp focus because the allegations are so serious. And, you know, if you think about the Premier League, it's not just about football. It's one of our main export industries. If you look at what football rights sell for around the world and the English Premier League is by far the crown jewel of all the different football associations, whether it's the Bundesliga, whether it's the Serie A, whatever it happens to be. football rights from the Premier League sell for way way more than anyone else's football league and that brand is in danger of looking really badly tarnished now as a result of what went on with Manchester City apparently thinking the laws of the land the laws of football do not apply to them and they were free to do what they like because they had incredible wealth and that brought them incredible numbers of trophies and you can imagine that if you're a non-manchester city fan and your team has been played by the rules you want to see them punished and you've got a government that thinks yeah there might be a wider cost to that the thing that i think is really interesting about this story is that it reminds me of what is in effect burnham's dirty political secret if you like um and is so at variance with the extraordinary speech that he gave yesterday and the content of it what do i mean by that we've talked a lot about manchesterism and this unique political philosophy or maybe not unique but the political philosophy that that burnham has and he would say it's about as we heard that word again and again and again yesterday control bringing back economic and political control to the british public and he says that's what he pioneered in in manchester and of course that is an element of truth for that you hear about the buses and so on his homelessness programs and and so on and so forth but there's a different side to manchester and manchesterism when people go to manchester today and it is a remarkable success story i mean it is even when i first worked there not long after i graduated like when i was there quite recently same street i used to walk down to granada studios key street manchester just virtually every building i think was completely different you'll have seen and experienced the same thing john but how has that money where's all that come from where's that money come from because it's not come from manchester city council it's not come from the council tax bills of people who live in manchester so much of manchester's renaissance and rebirth has been the product of foreign direct investment.

8:39And a lot of that money, a lot of it's come from China. A lot of it's come from other authoritarian states. And a lot of that money, particularly around the Etihad campus in Manchester City, has come directly from Abu Dhabi, Middle Eastern oil money, right? And we all know about the human rights records and the criticisms that have been made of that state. Over 700 million pounds, the club said, invested since 2008 for 300 million comprising the stadium expansion they've been buying huge swaths of land from the city council and that has been done with active cooperation and connivance of the city council and andy burnham himself but we don't have control over that that's not about our control right and right now this story about this club shows exactly how when you open yourself up to that money and when you open yourself up to that foreign direct investment when there's not much money going around nationally what control do we have over the UAE and the UAE government and Abu Dhabi not very much at all so this story I think crystallizes the central paradox of Burnham's politics up to now which has been that he wants in some senses we heard yesterday to return to a more statist approach to politics to give the public more control over their institutions their economic democracy, their political democracy, and so on.

10:03But his big achievement in politics has been actually in so many ways, remarkably, Blairite, which is to welcome in foreign money, and more foreign money, and more foreign money, and use it to transform people's lives. It is his, as I say, dirty little secret of politics. Look, I'm going to make a comparison now, which kind of might seem absurd, and maybe some would say, you know, hyperbolic to suggest that this is in any way similar. But you talk about Blairite, When Tony Blair was prime minister, he had to weigh in on the al-Yamama arms deal that had taken place years before he'd become prime minister.

10:37I think it was negotiated during Thatcher's time with, you know, BAE, defence contractor, selling arms to Saudi Arabia. And the suggestion that bribes were paid and people were bought off and all the rest of it. And there was a serious fraud office investigation and charges were going to be brought. and Saudi Arabia said, no, you've got to stop. And Tony Blair intervened to call off the SFO investigation, showing the immense power that Saudi Arabia had over our politics. And you could imagine something not dissimilar happening now if the sanction against Manchester city is so serious and the kind of rulers in Abu Dhabi think hang on this is going to be very embarrassing for us and we don't want this to happen and look at how much we invest in the UK we're going to you know put the pressure on diplomatically that this cannot go ahead and I think there are broad similarities in these two things even though completely different areas one is football one is you know purchase of arms but it shows that you know Britain is not the wealthy country that kicks ass we need their investment in exactly we if if britain is to grow is to regenerate these inner cities then where is the money coming from it's coming from abroad and that is something that people have got to wake up to that this has happened and now we get uncomfortable questions arising from it exactly um for manchester read britain yeah you know and and and this is as much as i we talked about yesterday you and i both wax lyrical about the speech you know we'll talk about it again it's i think it is genuinely a really important contribution and genuinely important moment in our national life for all sorts of reasons but it is true to say that this experience and and this company and and this it is a reflection of that wide attention which is that it is easier to have control you can have control when you are master of your own destiny you have control when you don't borrow money you have control when you have enough adequate resources you have control when you have national resilience you have control when you have enough hard power to be able to ensure that no one can boss you around or tell you what to do and the fact is is that right now Britain has seldom economically speaking or politically speaking felt smaller and Andy Burnham is trying to return a politics of control which I totally understand and it is really potent because people feel it people feel the lack of control of our own destiny politically as a nation and they don't like it understandably speaking they feel it over their own lives and they feel it collectively but it is a helpful reminder this story that so much of british policy making has been to outsource control or outsource money or influence or whatever it is and it's happened for a good reason which is that britain is becoming less powerful over time not more powerful just on all politics though again i do think um i can't imagine number 10 would have much welcome that joke from lucy powell i mean like for the sake of what um you know making fun of what is basically a huge corruption scandal which sits not close to andy burnham obviously in terms of he's had anything to do with it but you know it's not it's not sufficiently comfortably far away you know this is a man who has defended the prime minister has defended you know the ua is defending that investment as we heard there and to make light of it for a cheap gag about football and it's breaking my rule of politics number one which is that you know politicians should just not make any gags about football because they always sound so unbelievably pathetically lame like just just just just leave it you know you're literally drawing attention drawing attention to burnham's burnham's presence in the story yes and i think it was so ill-advised it was so ill-advised and also to be smug about Manchester City today when there is the most serious investigation going on and potentially well I think it is the biggest football scandal that we have ever known by some distance and she's making jokes about the other part of Manchester it's not going to sit well and I just think it kind of you know actually in a way we kind of thought what is the focus of our telling of this story today.

15:01And we heard how Lucy Powell closed the conference. We thought, yeah, there is a proper political angle to all of this. Well, we're joined now by a journalist who covers football, politics, power, money, Joey Durso, who's also the author of More Than a Shirt. And Joey, this is sort of, you know, you can just look at it in a very narrowest terms and it's about football. It's about Manchester City. This is also about what our new prime minister does the former mayor of Manchester, about the UAE, its relations with the UAE, because they own Manchester City. Yeah, absolutely. And you can see this, you can, with your own feet, you know, if you come out of Manchester Piccadilly station and you turn right and you walk for about 20 or 30 minutes, you'll end up at the Etihad Stadium.

15:49And it is a pretty swanky place. There's a nearby co-op live, this huge indoor arena, there's a training pitch. And it's also a place where people live nice flats whatever and the city has been transformed um in large part due to man city you know there are many many other reasons there's all sorts of chinese investments but um a huge part of the transformation of manchester in recent years the football club has played a pretty big role in that and our prime minister um has also played a role in that and so he's played a role in it yet his whole kind of political argument in yesterday's speech was oh it's the small guy that gets downtrodden and the big people get away with it.

16:26And here we have probably going to be a situation where Man City, the owners, the UAE are putting pressure on the government to say, make sure we don't get anything serious happen to us as a result of the charges brought by the Premier League. Yeah, I mean, I think to be fair to Birdo, it's good to just briefly lay out the sort of timeline, which is 2002, the Commonwealth Games are in Manchester with the agreement that that stadium goes to Manchester City Football Club before they're owned by Abu Dhabi. They're bought by Abu Dhabi in 2008, pretty quickly start winning the Premier League, becoming the best club in the country.

17:01Burnham comes in as mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017. So this ball was rolling well before him, but it's certainly part of his politics. You know, I was in Manchester quite recently, I hadn't been there for a few years, and the number of new skyscrapers is incredible. And I think it is a success story. You know, you've got to say, take your hat off to it. A lot of British provincial cities are not economic success stories. And it is. So it's this moral quandary of it's the only way to get a British city booming by accepting money from some, frankly, shady sources, not just Abu Dhabi, but also China.

17:30Yeah. And what do you think? Where does this go? Well, I think, you know, I mean, a city will appeal, it looks like. But when it comes to sanctions, I would be astonished if they didn't completely throw the book at them. You know, not just money, because money is, frankly meaningless on the scale that we're talking about fines but sporting sanctions that could be relegations point deductions but it's almost what could ever you know all these other clubs that have missed out on trophies because of uh man city that they're all going to be clamoring for extremely harsh punishments but the much bigger question is what does that mean for um you know manchester probably not very much this infrastructure is built it's it's running its own thing this whole part of the city is is transformed um and is that a good thing for manchester i would say yes it probably has been even if it's a bit awkward just expect i mean this is um this is not my area of expertise joey so you'll have to sort of hold my hand a little bit metaphorically obviously um but what when you say the other clubs are really sort of irritated they've lost as a result of this what do you mean because they had ill-begotten gains that they used to funnel into their own success yeah so liverpool jürgen klopp's liverpool who um won the premier League once they very narrowly missed it twice despite you know being one of the best teams of the modern era they only got one Premier League trophy for it because they just missed out to this Manchester City super team which we now know was supercharged by all this ill-gotten money sham contracts and whatever else and the Premier League's financial regulations place a limit on how much an owner can funnel into one clubs and there is an argument that that is unfair and benefits the big and old historic clubs but that's probably a topic for another day but yes the clubs like Liverpool to take one example they've just missed out on those trophies because of Manchester City's money that now all looks very shady they're all really annoyed about could those trophies be retrospectively removed taken away they could and that's happened in Italy in the past in the in the sort of 2000s but kind of what does it mean really you know if you win a trophy you get that glorious moment and people will be remembering you know their grandad who's no longer with us celebrating with him or you know these things are so meaningful for people's lives um and they're never going to get those moments back and it's kind of a bit you know is Jurgen Klopp going to go back up to Liverpool with his old players and get on a bus eight years later than what they should the Premier League it's all a bit of a they could do but I think people are looking actually at the future and how do you hobble Manchester City so if you just relegate them down to the division below and they can spend all the money and go straight back up and normal service regime that's kind of a bit of a waste of everyone's time well I was going to say But this is what I was going to say.

20:00This is a story fundamentally about power and how you can sanction, you know, what basically is a state asset of a foreign country, or at least something that's owned effectively by a foreign country, which basically has unlimited resources. And it seems to me that what sanction could possibly be associated or attached to? Because like you say, presumably the worst thing that can happen to a club is for them to be relegated, but presumably they'll just pour all the money back in and be up again the next season. Yeah. And, you know, unlimited resources is a good phrase because football clubs are, But, you know, we hear football clubs, footballers are paid far too much money.

20:31Erling Haaland earns hundreds of thousands of pounds a week. Lots of people think that's a scandal. Fair enough. But in the grand scheme of the Abu Dhabi state budget, it's kind of a pittance, really. But when you're competing against multimillionaires or billionaires who own other clubs, even very wealthy Americans, they don't have bottomless pockets. Whereas the state of Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia, which owns Newcastle, they can kind of spend up what they like, which is why these rules exist. that it now looks like have been flagrantly breached over many years. I mean, what we've seen in history is moments where something has happened in terms of a relationship between US companies, sorry, UK companies and a Gulf state.

21:17And the government is asked to adjudicate on this. I'm thinking of, you know, kind of it's a completely different story. But with Saudi Arabia and an arms deal and whether there was bribery that took place and Tony Blair eventually intervenes and calls off a serious fraud office investigation at the behest of Saudi Arabia because it would do so much damage to Britain. And I just wonder whether kind of it's not the same, but whether Andy Burnham could be facing something very similar. If the Premier League say, right, we're kicking out Manchester City and you've got the, you know, the authorities, the powers that be in Abu Dhabi saying, don't do that.

21:55Don't do that because that could jeopardise an awful lot of other investment in the UK. Well, possibly. And it would be true. You know, I think we need them more than more than they need us. And there's loads of jobs around Britain that are supported by Abu Dhabi, by Saudi Arabia. The arms industry is one. But also linked to the Newcastle United takeover, there's been talk of a massive kind of chemicals deal with a factory not far from Newcastle. They have these huge sort of billions to throw at things, which Brits just don't anymore. You know, there aren't many British billionaires these days.

22:27So it's this sort of bottomless pool of cash, which is very, very useful to a country that has been economically stagnant for 20 years. Do you think the UAE is the only thing that the Premier League or the FA could do, Joey, that would make the UAE lose interest in Manchester City? Well, I suppose if they ever reach the point that they decide it's not worth it, it's been interesting watching Newcastle and Saudi Arabia recently because it looks like they've kind of withdrawn from the Live Golf, this golf tournament that they bankrolled. And there are kind of rumblings. I don't think it's quite clear that it's happening yet, but that they might be losing interest in Newcastle.

23:00but I suppose like you know people use this term sports washing a lot which to use analogy it's like you put in a dirty thing you wash it and it comes out clean right so but I don't think they're doing this to make people in Britain think that they're a good place that Abu Dhabi is wonderful that Saudi Arabia is wonderful there's a much bigger kind of power game here about the conflicts in the Middle East and whether Abu Dhabi this kind of tiny little place will exist in a world full of like hostile neighbors and becoming this huge thing that owns Manchester City that is deeply involved in the British defence industry, kind of helps the future foreign relations of these Gulf monarchies.

23:35And they don't really care what people in Britain think of them. People in Britain have thought very negatively of Abu Dhabi and Man City, apart from Man City fans, for a very long time. They don't really care about that. And how much is this similar to what happened with Roman Abramovich and his ownership of Chelsea, and then suddenly the war in Ukraine starts, the Russian invasion takes place, and Roman Abramovich is told to go away? I mean, is it possible? that someone might insist that the UAE has to relinquish its money and control of Manchester City. So, well, two things there. There's a very big difference between Chelsea and Manchester City, which is that Chelsea got new owners.

24:15Abramovich was sanctioned. American guys came in who have not done very well on the football pitch and spent a lot of money. But again, a topic for another day. But they opened the books. They came to a settlement. They said, look, we're the new owners. Some dodgy stuff has gone on in the past. look at all our accounts and they've come to a settlement they've paid fines some of it is still ongoing Manchester City have taken the complete opposite approach it's been denial denial frankly lies according to the Premier League report complete you know denial of everything fighting it in bad faith that's what the Premier League says so it's a very different situation and that's why the Premier League will probably throw the book at Man City in a way they never did with Chelsea Just a final question, really.

25:00You look at what's happened and what the government might do. And of course, Andy Burnham is, you know, the head of UK PLC and has to do what is in Britain's interests. Yet there is a man who is a devout football supporter, Everton fan, who've been penalised by the Premier League, deducted six points. He's not going to want to see Manchester City get away scot-free, is he? well I mean there's that but there's also the fact that he was mayor of the city that's been completely transformed in large part due to this money so it is an awkward one for him I think um but yeah I'm sure as a football fan he would like Manchester City to get relegated probably like um fans of most teams but it's this Manchester element that I found find so interesting about it which way do you think he'll go what do you think will be the calculation I think he'll try and avoid it and I mean well it's interesting there you know he he I'm sure he'll just try and avoid the topic as much as possible um and then you know maybe follow the way the winds are blowing.

25:57I think he'd rather talk about pretty much any other topic than this right now. Joey Durso, many thanks. Thanks, Joey. Thanks for having me.

26:20Well, let's talk a bit more about Britain's place in the world, not this time about Manchester City and Abu Dhabi, but about Britain's relations with the European Union, because there was a passage in Andy Burnham's speech yesterday where he said, look, Brexit isn't working and it's been, you know, net bad for the UK and we've got to rethink the relationship. And he was asked in his interviews that were conducted after the speech about whether he was open to Britain rejoining the European Union, which has been, I mean, all through the Stammy. Don't talk about that. Whatever you do, don't talk about that.

26:54And Andy Burnham said, yeah, yeah, that's one of the possibilities. It's one of the options that we can have. We leave it as it is. We renegotiate on the lines of, you know, joining the kind of free market, single market or customs union or we go back in. And there you have the prime minister 10 weeks in putting it back on the agenda that a return to the European Union is possible. and he clearly thinks slightly desirable. And there's a whole lot of questions that flow from that. There are. I have to say, I mean, when we asked the Scotland secretary yesterday, Delegates Alexander, what the prime minister meant in his speech.

27:33And, you know, he said, well, potentially, obviously, after the next election, Sakhir Starmer's red lines could be on the table. I did not think that that would necessarily include rejoining the EU itself. And I think it is a mark, as we were saying yesterday, of Andy Burnham's confidence. He's running towards conflict. I mean, you've got to think this is such a long way from where Labour was going into the 24 election. I mean, at one point, Keir Starmer, you know, he was still talking about, you know, we need to make Brexit work. He wouldn't even accept at various points that Brexit had really necessarily damaged our trade.

28:04And so, I mean, that's changed slowly over time. But in the space of only two years since the start of the parliament to get to a point where or admittedly a new prime minister is talking about the prospect of rejoining, then, you know, that is some movement. It's even a movement from when he was standing in Makerfield, because, of course, when he was in Makerfield, he said promise not to rerun Brexit arguments and said he was not proposing that the UK considers rejoining the EU. And there are lots of sort of practical questions, right? Because if that's where the Labour Party ends up, then presumably that would have to be in the next Labour manifesto.

28:40Would it be to have a referendum to rejoin? Presumably the answer would be yes. You'd have to. You couldn't probably. Otherwise, I mean, does that hold? I think, you know, there'll be lots of Labour MPs who'll be worried that that general election could therefore potentially become a sort of de facto referendum. It's another Brexit election a la 2019. It's true that the country's moved, like most people in the country. even leavers think brexit has been a bad idea but of course reopening that pandora's box it's it's brave but it's potentially dangerous i wonder whether it was look we could rejoin the european union and then when he comes up with a proposal that says why don't we just rejoin the customs union and people go oh thank god we're not going that far yeah and and you know you kind of put the more extreme measure out there but you also disappoint all of those who who think that is yeah I mean, I suppose the other thing that struck me yesterday was, you know, listening to the speech where he's talking about, you know, reframing our relationship with Europe and Brexit isn't working.

29:38And oh, by the way, with VATs coming off electricity on Thursday, you think VAT wouldn't be coming off electricity if we were still in the European Union, where we wouldn't have had that degree of flexibility to do that. And you see, you do see that there are certain areas of political action where Andy Burnham is free to move because of Brexit. Well, I agree. I think actually this was my sort of slight surprise with it, which is that, you know, Andy Burnham was in so many ways yesterday. I mean, I was, you know, I was saying yesterday, wasn't I, this was a sort of the Labour Party finally turning its back on Thatcher.

30:12I mean, in many ways, it was also the Labour Party finally turning its back on Tony Blair. On New Labour. On New Labour. On New Labour, because it was a speech which in every way cut against so many of the fundamental assumptions of the New Labour era. And Tony Blair always felt that, you know, he was only making a good speech if he was telling the Labour Party something he didn't want to hear, if it was pushing it into a place they didn't want to go to. And Andy Burnham has different analysis. He believes fundamentally, and he's gone on this journey himself, that the Labour Party is at its best when it is most, it lives up to its own instincts and its own instincts that, you know, there are elements of the privatisation went too far, that the state needs more direct control in the economy.

31:03That level of accountability is important. But of course, if we rejoin the EU, then quite a few of those abilities to direct our economy in terms of state control of certain aspects of the economy, the interventionism, the planning that is part of that. Backing winners. Backing winners, aggressive regional and industrial policy. Some of that wouldn't be possible if we were to follow the dictums and the strictures of the EU. Now, some people say, well, you know, France does that and other countries in the EU kind of do that anyway. And they just sort of ignore those things. But it is true to say that at the heart of it, just in terms of the political essence of that speech yesterday, it was about it was taking the Brexit argument turning on its head.

31:50It was saying we want control. And it was the right who gave control away. Very, very potent. But it does sit quite uncomfortably, potentially, with saying, right, we want more control in our lives, but we're going to hand quite a bit of it back to Brussels. I mean, you have to be a really dexterous political, and he is, but you have to be really dexterous to sort of be able to sort of square that circle with people. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that, you know, you had Andy Burnham saying that yesterday. Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, has been making a speech today, and he's also been talking about Brexit.

32:21He lost eight points of PIB since Brexit. The Brexit is the biggest lie of the last 30 years. Those who said we'll be more rich, 8 points of PIB in less 10 years later. We'll solve immigration problems, it's more complicated than before. And we'll be able to cut into international commerce. It's worse.

32:57what a waste of time what a disaster it has been and then you have kind of emmanuel macron and so on one level i'm sure the european union is thinking and looking at what happened at the labor party conference yesterday in liverpool thinking happy days britain is coming back they kind of recognize it's been a disaster and at the same thing he time thinking utterly trepidatious about oh my god have we got to go through this again we've just bloody settled this settlement of you know a post brexit world with britain not part of the eu and now they want to reopen it again are they serious how much commitment is there where is british public opinion what about if there's a referendum all those things which will make me think oh my god well we want this and the other thing of course is that um you know the labour party has been clear that this is a this is something for the the next manifesto you know the red lines exist as long as this parliament exists so let's just assume for the sake of argument that this parliament does run to 2028, 2029.

33:52It's a long way from the EU of 2016. You know, both sort of in terms of what the EU's become, but also potentially in terms of the foreign leaders that we might be trying to negotiate with. According to all of the polls, Macron is at the end of his presidency. All of the polls show that Marine Le Pen is far ahead of her competitors. We may have in the next, who knows, the AFD are becoming bigger and bigger players. within German politics. We've got the populist right on the rise across much of Europe and other populist forces on the left as well. Might even include Burnham in that. We've obviously got Maloney in Italy.