Burnham batters Reform - next stop Number 10?

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0:43He is furious with the way that Burnham is behaving. He doesn't believe that he's serious. He doesn't believe that his policies are serious. He doesn't believe that he's got a real programme. He thinks he's just vibes. We found one person, weirdly, who liked Keir Starmer so much they were voting reform. Force a contest where everyone is ripping each other apart and for which I suspect the Labour Party will find very little forgiveness from the electorate. And I mean it. The word make a field in the future must be known as a byword for the change that came to British politics. This is the moment.

1:16We've been on a path for 40 years that simply hasn't worked for people and places in this part of the world. And this now is the change moment. We have an opportunity to turn the tide, to make the country feel like it's working again, to make people see that politics can make a positive difference, to make people feel hope again. That is the main thing I think we need in this country right now, for people to feel a sense of hope. Get used to that voice because you might just be listening to Britain's next Prime Minister. Andy Burnham won more votes last night than all the other parties put together.

1:59Does that make his rise to the top job now look inevitable? Well, not if Keir Starmer has his way. He has warned that a leadership challenge will tear apart our country and our movement. But a hundred Labour MPs have now publicly called on him to go. Is anyone listening to the Prime Minister anymore? Welcome to the News Agents.

2:26The News Agents. It's John. It's Meatless. It's Lewis. And Annie Burnham, as you will have heard already, didn't just win the Makerfield by-election, he stormed the Makerfield by-election. He exceeded all expectations, frankly, of what most analysts and his fellow politicians and Labour Party members thought was possible. Just to run you through the figures. Burnham got nearly 25 ,000 votes. That is an absolute majority of those who voted of nearly 55%. That is up 10%, nearly 10 percentage points, on the general election performance. Now, bear in mind that the general election performance obviously took place in the context of an overall Labour landslide.

3:08And this by-election, two years later, is taking place in the context of Labour being at their lowest point, sustained point in the polls in living memory, arguably ever. And so for Burnham to achieve that, to face those political headwinds in a seat which reformed, don't listen to their spin this morning. They're saying, oh, it was always been a Labour seat. This was always a tough battle for us. It was their 13th target seat. They barely needed much of a swing at all to take it. And in a situation where Labour nationally, as I say, is doing so badly, I think it is proof positive, proof of concept that only Andy Burnham, with his peculiar and particular political profile and political purchase in that part of the world, could have won it.

3:56Remember, one other fact, only six weeks ago, six weeks ago, in this same constituency, in these same wards, reform got over 50 % of the vote. Six weeks later, just after the Labour Party was wiped out, Burnham, as I say, is getting 50%. It is a 23 point swing. And this is why Labour MPs, who only six weeks ago had something of a near death sort of political experience. they're now looking at Burnham and thinking, my word, have we actually found the medicine? Yeah, and it's worth looking at what has happened to some of the other parties overnight to get a real picture of just how the electorate in those various towns and makerfield chose to vote because the Conservatives lost their deposit.

4:44The Lib Dems got around 150 votes. You're kind of in friends and family territory, are you? Yeah, just I think slightly more than Count Binface. and the Greens also very small numbers. But I think to think that this is a sign that they didn't do well themselves is to miss the point. What you had was a concerted effort, certainly by the progressive parties, but presumably also by Conservative voters to say this is going to be a block reform vote. We've decided that Burnham is the preferable choice here, even if it's not our first party. And so where he won was not just people who might have gone to reform but came back because it was him, who were Labour, had been pissed off with Keir, but came back because it was him, but all the other parties who were very much on a stop reform ticket, I think.

5:35And it has stopped reform. And the extraordinary thing about what happened overnight is Farage's little video wall where he's standing in something slightly akin to a field of wheat. And he's basically describing how disappointed he was with the result and telling off the 2 ,000 or so voters who went for Restore. Restore did have a pretty good night. 7%. They gained 7%, right, which was where the polls had them. Nobody really believed them. But it seemed that that really upset Farage himself. A emphatic win for Andy Burnham with a vote share that nobody could quite see coming. In many ways, he's a popular local mayor, just as Boris Johnson was a very popular mayor in London just a few years ago.

6:22What really happened here is it was vote Burnham, get Starmer out, which, of course, was our campaign message leading up to the locals on the 7th of May. So we were slightly hoist with our own petard. As for the reform vote share, well, I thought we'd get 18 ,000 votes. We got just shy of 16, so I'm disappointed by that, no question about it. But I would say this, there's a couple of thousand voters there who would normally have gone out and voted reform, that voted restore. And I would say directly to them, what do you want? We are the challenger party to the left in this country. And I would urge you to think again.

7:00I really, really would. It's so interesting. It's like you have been very naughty boys and girls. You should not have voted restore. You should have voted reform. And I won't have put up with it for any longer. And look, you know, the line from the Italian job comes to mind about what Andy Burnham did last night, which is, you know, you weren't meant to blow the bloody doors off. And Andy Burnham, you know, took it apart. And I think that this kind of if you were to do the compare and contrast essay question that you get in your A-levels or, you know, university, compare and contrast what happened when Keir Starmer was at the head of the ticket in the local council elections to when Andy Burnham was on the ticket in this Makerfield by-election.

7:43and you can see the difference and you can see why it's probably a forlorn hope of the prime minister to say, look, the last thing that country needs now is a leadership contest. It will be divisive. It will ruin the party. I think we've gone past that. I think the fact that, you know, you think how many people can't put their name to a petition in parliament calling for Keir Starmer to go because they're part of the payroll vote. They're the parliamentary undersecretary. They're the minister of state. They're the secretary of state. They're the parliamentary private secretary, whatever it happens to be.

8:17They can't do it without being forced to resign. So you've got 100 backbench MPs who've now come forward and said it is time for Starmer to go. And I don't know how you staunch that bleeding with a message that seems to be. And this is what he said on a call to party workers was, look, we're turning the corner. There are green shoots coming. We think reform have peaked. And that may be true. But, you know, just stick with me. And the fact of the matter is, it was Makerfield and Burnham that showed the difference. John, you don't even need to go back to the local elections, even though they're only six weeks ago.

8:53You could say that we had some controlled experiments even last night, because, of course, we didn't just have one by-election in Makerfield. We also had two by-elections in Scotland, one in Arbroath and one in Aberdeen. In both cases, obviously, Andy Burnham was not on the ballot in those constituencies. In effect, the Keir Starmer Labour Party was on the ballot in those constituencies. And in both places, Labour got absolutely smashed in two constituencies that actually they were quite competitive in in the general election. Now, you might say Aberdeen, particular circumstances around oil and gas.

9:23But look at our growth again. I mean, Labour absolutely, you know, only within about a thousand votes of taking that seat in a place that Labour did very well in 2024. and when Keir Starmer said, and I think we can hear the clip now, when Keir Starmer says that reform has peaked, if he's looking at Makerfield, there is a very clear reason why reform has peaked and it's not called Keir Starmer, it's called Andy Burnham. Listen to this. You look at it in the context of other by-elections, that the tide is turning on reform, that they can't now win by-elections, they've reached probably the peak of their support and it's going down.

9:57So very good, congratulations to Andy Burnham, but actually tide is turning on reform as well so this is really important in that respect. I mean the interesting thing is he has a point because there were two council elections overnight one in Rochford one in Essex where reform had been in control and they lost both of those to the Conservatives so there is an irony going on here which is that Keir Starmer might be right about reform coming off the top of their heights just at the point where he won't be around to see it because essentially the movement, the wagon, the band is now properly behind Burnham.

10:35And part of it, I think, is just the way that he delivered this result, not just the numbers, but the sort of normalcy. What do I mean by that? The first thing he said when people sort of tried to stop him off the result, are you going to go to Westminster? Are you going to challenge Keir Starmer? He just went, no, actually, I'm going to go for a beer. I cannot imagine a world in which that was Starmer's line after a by-election win of any kind. But he wouldn't believe it if he said it. Yeah, he'd have to say, no, the work starts here and we're going to get back. Burnham just kind of like waved it away.

11:06He sounds quite normal. He then sort of knows what to say to the camera crews that are trying to get Tony Blair-like lines out of him. Hasn't you Dawn broken, Andy? And he's like, I know what you're doing. Nice try. Get away. All of this. He didn't feel the hand of history on his shoulder. I mean, that's the point. When we were doing the focus group on Tuesday, the word that kept on coming up was personable, right? Which is not charismatic, because charismatic might be a bit sort of, you know, sort of tricksy, might be a bit snake oily. It just sounds quite normal. And I think what he has so far held together, and if you go back to the first clip we played, he's not very fluent.

11:44He's not a great orator. He's definitely not a barmer on the stump of Ashton Town FC there. But he does sort of convince people. I'd love to see that. Wouldn't you love to see? Obama, Ashton Town. It's all possible now. It's all possible. A new dawn has broken, has it not? But I just think there is something that sort of isn't scary or weird here, which is part of what the sort of the by-election was responding to there. Yeah. I mean, I have to say, I mean, I hate what you're saying, Emily, about that there have been a few by-elections where reform is going down. There's certainly evidence to say that where reform take office locally, they don't tend to do very well and people tend to vote with their feet afterwards.

12:21And he realised what they're like in power. Well, yeah, absolutely. But, I don't know, I think the PMI minister, they're a little bit shameless there, to be honest. I mean, to turn around and go... To wrap himself in the Makerfield victory. Yeah, I mean, look, everyone knows, right, everyone knows, Andy Burnham ran a campaign which was basically a hostile takeover of the Labour Party in plain sight. A frame-by-frame, slow-motion coup. He was saying, we all were there, none of his signs had Labour on it, it was Vote Andy, and he was saying, I'm going to change the Labour Party, I am coming for Keir Starmer.

12:52Actually, one of the mistakes that reform made was saying to people, Andy Burnham is using this as a stepping stone to become prime minister. And make it feel people have gone, yeah, bloody right, fantastic. We don't like Keir Starmer. We want him to actually use us as a stepping stone to get rid of Keir Starmer. We found one person, weirdly, who liked Keir Starmer so much, they were voting reform. I mean, you know, we are at a new... This is what I love about democracy. We're at a new place when it comes to sort of tactical voting, aren't we? You know, only six weeks ago, I mean, he can point to different by-elections and so on, but only six weeks ago, the Labour Party got wiped out across many and most of its historic heartlands, including Makerfield, under the Keir Starmer Labour Party.

13:33I can understand completely why this must be really difficult for Keir Starmer. And he, you know, I'm the first one to say he's done some good things in office. I'm sure we'll look back on those with more gratitude than we do now. But frankly, I think the Prime Minister needs to grow up today. He needs to grow up and see and realise what the political reality is. The Labour Party, it is clear that most of the parliamentary Labour Party have been terrified by the political hemorrhaging and bleeding to reform. It's clear that he does not enjoy the support of most of the parliamentary Labour Party any longer.

14:03He can talk about his mandate all he likes. But ultimately, what he had in 2024 was an opportunity to govern. He had a huge majority to do so. And for whatever reason, some of it is in his control, some of it not in his control. he has squandered that opportunity and if he wants to drag the Labour Party if he's serious about dragging the Labour Party through a contest against Burnham which against with the members he would lose then all he will do is damage his own reputation for posterity. Look we know that Keir Starmer is a stubborn man we know that Keir Starmer is sort of rather Joe Biden like in that sense of always saying people have always underestimated me and yet I've always risen above the challenge and you know in him winning the presidency and Keir Starmer becoming prime minister was kind of proof of that kind of you know I can beat the odds and he still seems to be going with that line saying I I I'm you know underestimated I've still got a lot to do we are we are proceeding with this and you know key ciphers like Anna Turley and Steve Reeder coming out and saying this is the wrong time for a leadership contest but you just have to think that stubbornness, which is what Keir Starmer is showing right now, is not enough.

15:17Surely there will be people, allies of Keir Starmer, saying you can have two legacies as we sit here in June 2026. One of them is to have been the guy that turned the party around after Jeremy Corbyn, who wins in probably a massive landslide election in 2024, who pilots some of the, you know, some, as you say, Lewis, some good policies that have been introduced, the turning round, and waiting lists on the health service and the like. And therefore, you know, you've done a great job, but it's now time to pass the, you know, the torch on to somebody else. Or you can torch the whole bloody place and force a contest where everyone is ripping each other apart.

15:56And for which I suspect the Labour Party will find very little forgiveness from the electorate. Look, they are both trying to sound like the grown-ups right now. Keir Starmer thinks by not going, he's holding on to stability. and Andy Burnham thinks by giving him this sort of, you know, window of the weekend of dignity, he's also going to be the person that doesn't sort of set alight, that doesn't trigger, doesn't fire the first shot. Patrick Maguire, the kind of, you know, the Labour horse whisperer, columnist at the Times, is talking about it just being a question of choreography. You know, if you're on planet Earth, you know what's coming next.

16:34We just don't know quite how or quite when.

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17:22Andy, Andy, what's your message to the PM? Andy, he says he's going to fight you. Andy, are you going to become the new prime minister? Andy, what's your message? Andy, Keir Starmer says he's not giving way so. What's your message to Keir Starmer? Neither is Beth Rigby. Andy, Andy, Andy. That was Beth Rigby with a classic of a genre of a doorstep. And look, we're playing that because there are so many questions for Andy Burnham right now. You could add another dozen of them. Andy, what's your policy on defence? Andy, what's your policy on the economy? Andy, what do you feel about the bond markets?

18:01And on and on and on. because there's so much we do not know about Andy Burnham and where he stands and whether he's got a worked out manifesto. At the moment, he might look like the saviour of the Labour Party and this government. But there is still huge unanswered questions about what his policies would be, what he would do, what the shape of the government would be, who would get jobs and all the rest of it. And I think that this is the territory we're now in. You said just before the break, Emily, about whether we're just talking about the choreography now. I think we are. I mean, history teaches us that, you know, when Thatcher said she was going to fight, she did until she wouldn't fight.

18:38We saw that with Boris Johnson until there were the resignations. You know, Keir Starmer is at that point now where no one has resigned today so far. It's ten past two in the afternoon, but it could happen. Yeah, but there's a lot going on in that just because there are all sorts of different theories doing the rounds at the moment. I mean, I was told at the weekend by somebody who was fiercely loyal to Keir Starmer that if Andy Burnham thinks he's going to get a coronation, then this person said, I'm going to throw my hat into the ring and make a tit of myself myself. In other words, they're not going to let it happen.

19:11There is a thought, I think, from Sam Coates, who was suggesting, Sam Coates of Sky News, who was suggesting that Keir Starmer was actually trying to encourage members of the cabinet, maybe MPs loyal to him, to go with Wes, streeting, to get Wes's numbers up to 81, at which point Wes is the one that triggers the contest, which Keir Starmer obviously can fight from a position of not having started anything. He doesn't need the 81 himself. I've talked to members of the cabinet who say that doesn't sound very much like Keir, but we'll wait and see. I think Andy Burnham clearly wants this to be a kind of, well, you know, the Damascene conversion will happen.

19:51He'll see the light, he'll make way for me and I will sort of sweep in there and I won't have to do any of the heavy lifting. Keir Starmer has made clear he's not going and actually could win from a messy contest. In other words, the more people come in, the more people kind of go, oh, my God, this is horrible. We don't want to look like the Conservatives. The last thing we want is to look like an immature party in government. Let's just stop this there and carry on doing what we're doing. So in that question of just choreography, there is a whole rainbow of potential kind of mess. And one last thing I was at a sort of do on Wednesday night when somebody pretty senior from the palace came up to me and said, what's going to happen in Makerfield?

20:32and I said oh you know I think we just got back. How is the king? Well exactly. Were you just chatting with the king? No not the king but it was quite interesting because I said it feels like a sort of seven to eight point lead and then I said but obviously I don't want to sound naive. I halved that. I said maybe it's just a four point lead. It felt like a Burnham thing and I suddenly realised that what he was kind of doing was working out if the whole weekend you know has to be reshuffled. This question of choreography goes right to the top. It's who has to go and ask the King for permission if this is all going to happen in 48 hours.

21:05That's what he wanted to know. Where are we? It seems to be that, I mean, undoubtedly we absolutely know that Burnham has got the 80 votes. There's no question about that. He'll have way more in terms of support in the Parliamentary Labour Party. So if Andy Burnham, when he takes his seat on Monday, and he will have to wait to take his seat and be officially sworn in as an MP, but when he takes his seat on Monday. Theoretically, he could trigger a contest there and then. It seems unlikely that that is going to happen because what Burnham clearly wants to do, what he would much prefer, is to avoid the kind of political bloodshed of that and the potential toxin that could flow from that and for the Prime Minister personally to come to the conclusion that the game is up.

21:46Now, it's also clear that Burnham believes, and I'm sure I know for a fact he's right in this, that there will be members of the cabinet, as you say, John, who will go to the prime minister over the course of the weekend. And we're also told that the prime minister has been doing a ring round of his cabinet ministers this morning, trying to drum up support, hoping, that is Burnham, that they will, enough of them will tell him the game is up and if necessary, resign and therefore just create, and we've lived through this game a lot in recent history, a sort of cascade of political momentum that forces, in the end, Starmer to go.

22:18Now, if that were to happen, then there is another question about whether there would be a coronation of Burnham effectively or whether it would be better for the Labour Party and for Burnham himself for there to be some sort of contest. My understanding is I think that there is a division of opinion about that, even with some within the Burnham inner circle, some who think much better to just use the momentum now, get him in there as quickly as possible, don't have the protracted leadership contest. This is the Kamala round, frankly, all over again, isn't it? Yes, absolutely. Or would it be better to confer upon Burnham a bit more legitimacy by winning a Labour leadership contest, particularly given the manner that he's come in?

22:51I'm also told, and I've been told by multiple people this, that what Keir Starmer is doing and saying is not synthetic, that he is genuinely furious. He is angry. He believes it to be his mandate. He is furious with the way that Burnham is behaving. He doesn't believe that he's serious. He doesn't believe that his policies are serious. He doesn't believe that he's got a real programme. He thinks he's just vibes. And he thinks, as we heard there, that reform have peaked and the Labour Party is acting like rabbits between the headlights. So at the moment, what we have basically is a battle of nerve and a battle of wills between the two men.

23:24And we just do not know, sat here on Friday afternoon, which of them will blink if either of them do. And just to add one bit to that is that if there is a contest and Andy Burnham does go, what does Keir Starmer instruct to the payroll vote, to the cabinet, to ministers, to ministers of state, to parliamentary undersecretaries, to parliamentary private secretaries? Are they free to campaign for Andy Burnham or do they have to stay quiet as ministers and support the prime minister? Because if they if he demands their loyalty, then that will force mass resignations, I would imagine. and then you're back into the Boris Johnson ending, which was so bloody, where he's trying to cling on by his fingertips and he cannot do it because resignation after resignation and you get people appointed to the Chancellor for one day and then resign the next day.

24:14I mean, that would be such a shambles for this government. But Keir Starmer does not seem to want to accept, as you say, Lewis, that the game is up and he thinks that he can fight it and win it and see off Andy Burnham's challenge. I just don't see that as realistic. I mean, it's more than just not wanting to accept the game is up. He is looking at actual data coming out now, whether it's on migration, whether it's on health figures, whether it's on growth, whether it's on inflation. Even inflation didn't rise in the way it was expected to after the Iran war. Keir Starmer thinks that he can say, look, just take the personalities away, take the drama away, look at what I'm actually delivering give me a bit more time to keep this going the two years is now starting to pay off why would you do this now but I think to assume that these conversations in the cabinet aren't already going on is wrong they've been in abeyance for the last 12 24 hours they've been frozen I was told early last week that Burnham and Shabana Mahmood had already essentially come to a settlement between them.

25:23Burnham wants Shabana Mahmood to be his chancellor. Shabana Mahmood has always sort of publicly insisted that she's very good in the Home Office and wants to stay there. I was told that there had been some kind of arrangement between the two of them now. Imagine that every other cabinet member and others outside will probably be working out, am I going to show my loyalty? Because, you know, that's more chance of me staying in a job for longer. Am I going to contest like we're streeting? or am I just going to see what kind of a deal, what kind of a job I might get from Burnham in the next 72 hours before I move?