Prime Minister Burnham - Labour's last hope?

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0:41Essentially, he's saying, I know we keep changing PM, but let's not do that anymore. Andy Burnham coming in and doing something very differently and a hell of a lot better. Now, maybe we've just come to accept that things are meant to be crap. The question is, does Burnham have a different prescription? It's about putting the right values and the right standards at the heart of government. I will put the care of people at the heart of everything I do. I will give this my all and I ask you all to pull with me. Let's build a new national sense of unity, of common purpose and positivity Let us make this the moment when Britain starts to believe again The moment we bring back hope Thank you very much everybody For great applause in Downing Street, Andy Burnham makes his first speech as Prime Minister No notes, no lectern, communicating directly to the British people down a camera lens.

1:53Andy Burnham:He's searching for that Obama vibe, isn't he? But what will the Burnham Premiership look like? What will it feel like? Is there anything that's really going to change? Is it more than just a different vibe? Welcome to the News Agents.

2:12The News Agents.

2:14Andy Burnham:It's John. It's Maitlis.

2:44Labour leader losing to Jeremy Corbyn. And now for a man, again, we should just take a step back and remember this, a man who was not even in Parliament six weeks ago, is now our 59th Prime Minister replacing Keir Starmer after a little more than two years. As John said, it was a different tome from the beginning. There was no lectern. He spoke directly to camera and to the throng of people who were there. At the time of recording, he is appointing his cabinet. But he said that he already had plans to make policy announcements from the very beginning. So he pledged to he said he would be giving an instruction to abolish or to end rough sleeping from day one.

3:27Intriguingly, in this very studio and studio in this building anyway, Jeremy Corbyn once told me on this show that that's exactly what he would have done if he had become prime minister's first instruction. He said he's going to set out measures from tomorrow to give people some, quote, breathing space with a cost of living. He announced he would set out a 10 year plan for Britain later this year. And he said that he will give this my all before as well recognizing. I thought this is an interesting touch, which might not necessarily expected him to acknowledge or make. But he recognized and spoke to the country in saying that, you know, this has happened a lot.

4:05One of the things that maybe makes this feel a little bit less remarkable than once it did is the fact we've had this churn of prime ministers. We've had this choreography so many times now over the last decade. And he is, depending on how you count it, the sixth or seventh prime minister over the last 10 years. Just listen to what he had to say about that very point. I am acutely conscious that I am the sixth person in the last 10 years to walk up this street. the seventh prime minister since 2016, making this a moment for reflection and new resolution. It requires my generation of politicians to raise our game and rise to the new challenge.

4:58Andy Burnham:It's a really interesting place to start by essentially saying my generation of politicians has let the country down. And then, yes, Lewis, this acknowledgement that he makes, I think Burnham is quite good at that. He sort of takes the elephant in the room and goes, right, here's the elephant. Let's just talk about this. Acutely aware of being the sixth prime minister, he said, in 10 years to walk up the street. And when he says it requires a moment of reflection, a new resolution, he's saying, I mean, essentially he's saying, I know we keep changing PM, but let's not do that anymore. And there is something slightly Chris Packham about that.

5:37Andy Burnham:Do you remember the wildlife presenter who said, once I've finished doing this, let's have a woman. It's like, all right, once you finish being in the role, you know, lol. There is something about Burnham now, which is like, I know we've got used to changing prime ministers, but we're not going to do that anymore. But I do think he's quite good at seizing the thing that is on everyone's mind and spilling it and just saying it, that shows an emotional intelligence that we probably haven't really felt in public life for the last couple of years. Can I just make a really shallow point, which is obviously my forte, which is that...

6:13Why change the habit of life? I know, I'm just setting you up for the easy lines. Look, he didn't have notes. He didn't have a lectern. But what he did was, you know, and this is from a TV presenter background, His eyes look around to different parts of the audience. But when he says politics has failed you, he's looking straight down the camera lens. Politics, we have failed you. Down the barrel of the lens. And I thought that that was an incredibly effective way of reaching out, talking directly to the people. So to your question at the top of the podcast, Emily, about is this vibes? Those are vibes that he is dealing with.

6:49And I think that, you know, when we had Liz Truss as prime minister and with Keir Starmer as prime minister, it they were awful communicators i mean you know kirsten couldn't tell a story and yeah you had on the vibes point andy burnham coming in and doing something very differently and a hell of a lot better now maybe we've just come to accept that things are meant to be crap and therefore watching him being able to talk in proper sentences without a script in front of him suddenly seemed kind of really positive but i think the other stuff you know lewis that you talked about this kind of the the rough sleeping ending rough sleeping and that's a serious ambition and probably is worth dwelling on a bit because that is not going to be an easy you know you suddenly don't find accommodation for all these people in those cities across this country well it's not the first time

7:37Andy Burnham:he said it and it's your corbin point you know corbin said it didn't get a chance to do it we don't know whether he would have succeeded burnham said it tried to do it in manchester brought rough sleeping down by half and then saw it climb again so actually you know it's not like it's not like he's actually wiped out rough sleeping in the place that he's just left no indeed well he's his first act i mean number 10 have put out the new number 10 have put out today he's uh pledging to increase funding to deal with rough sleeping by 340 million which is not you know an insignificant amount of money i think that i mean one of the really interesting things i was still one of the things i was thinking about uh listening listening to burnham is i mean you said emily your question was is is anything really changing in one sense you can see a great deal of continuity between Starmer and Burnham in that actually they're promising the same thing.

8:25If you go back to 2024 actually what did Starmer say? He said he wanted a politics which tread or trod more lightly on people's lives i.e he would bring stability back and he would stop the volatility and he talked about the fact the country required fundamental change. He said that Britain was completely broken. Burnham is talking in similar sorts of tones and in a similar sorts of ways. The question therefore is it's in a sense the same diagnosis the question is does burnham have a different prescription is burnham serious about the idea of doing government differently and rewiring the british state and this to me i think will end up being the sort of one of the conundrums of the burnham government one of the tensions of the burnham government which is if you think about like changes of prime why do we usually have changes of prime minister midterm i think thinking about it there's basically three reasons one pretty rare personal scandal boris johnson list trust being who she is Liz Truss to basically the guy at the top or the woman at the top has become very unpopular but the program remains broadly the same that's a kind of Thatcher into Major a Blair into Brown and then a third reason that the whole program needs to change that's a kind of May into Johnson there needs to be a fundamental change in direction the problem for Burnham is if he thinks that this is the answer is three that you need a really big change a really big shift in political direction and of course the problem you're going to come up against sooner or later is that there are going to be big parts of the Labour Party who won't like those changes who say there isn't legitimacy for those changes and of course it means potentially moving away more and more from the confines of the 2024 election manifesto and therefore at some point particularly argument coming that you need to have an election sooner rather than later so the thing I'm really intrigued to see is whether Burnham in his heart of hearts actually thinks this is a kind of category three change, which is we need a fundamental political direction, or really does he really think that it is about your thing, Emily, which is vibes?

10:25Andy Burnham:I would say the difference between the two men, and I totally accept that diagnosis, the difference between the two men is that Burnham, at least for now, does not feel scared of his own skin. And it's literally about, I'm not going to say literally, I sounded like a lot of our colleagues, but it is about knowing that you are going to affect the thing that you want to do. What we saw with Keir Starmer, was having reshaped the party, he then became too scared of the party. It was almost like he knew he'd got rid of the Corbyn party, so he had to be nice to this new look party because that was what he had.

11:00Andy Burnham:So when he came up against difficulties, whether it was the welfare, whether it was immigration, whether it's do I want to sound like the island of strangers, do I not, am I against the child cap on benefits, am I not, he was scared of his own shadow. He didn't really know what he wanted to do because he was still being bossed around by the party. Burnham is in the advantageous place that this party has to be nice to him because it is the last chance they have. So if he has an agenda, whatever he chooses to do, whatever he takes them, whether it's about North Sea drilling, whether it's about cutting welfare, whether it's about, you know, standing up to Trump, they kind of have to go along with it.

11:41Andy Burnham:Because otherwise they're done. They're over, which I think is a cleaner slate for him if he actually does know what he wants to do. Just to say that we're recording this and it's just before quarter past three in the afternoon. And I've just seen someone reporting that Donald Trump has already had his first conversation with Andy Burnham. So that was obviously called who. Yeah, well, I think it was a kind of. It's going to pop up at number 10 now. Yeah, exactly. So so so there you have kind of, you know, the first priority. Speak to the US. I think Andy Burnham simultaneously has a great strength and simultaneously has a great weakness.

12:14and the great strength I think you have just outlined, which is that the Labour Party cannot afford to piss him around in the way that they did with Keir Starmer. One, because Andy Burnham, you can't just keep changing your prime minister. This is it. This is it. This is the last roll of the dice for the Labour Party before the next general election. They cannot do this again. So if Andy Burnham decrees it, probably best to get on board with it. That's the great strength that Andy Burnham has. The great weakness, of course, is that there is no mandate for some of the changes possibly that he wants to introduce.

12:48And he talks about having a 10 year plan. And you think, well, hang on. Sorry, didn't we have that two years ago with Keir Starmer when he came to office and said, I've got a 10 year plan. So the extent to which he sticks with the manifesto or wants to break out in new directions. And it seems like we're going to have a minor fiscal event this week where he's going to talk about his plans to ease the burden on the cost of living on ordinary people, which presumably means some kind of, I don't know, fiscal change or whatever. He's got to find money from somewhere to do this. And that is his great weakness.

13:19How can he do all this without calling a general election? Can I reveal that we had a dinner a couple of weeks ago with our bosses and we had a sweepstake on where the next general election would be? I went really late and I'm now thinking I've got that completely wrong. I'd like to reopen my sweepstake bet and go much earlier.

13:36Andy Burnham:I tried to do that and I wasn't allowed. I went really early and now I'm thinking 29. I think you might be right. No. But just to the point of democracy, sorry, just this one point. Right at the very beginning, he offered up in his speech without the lectern outside Down the Street, he offered up the line that is part of the, you know, sort of constitutional formality of becoming the new prime minister. He said, I have just met with his majesty, the king, and he has, you know, granted me the chance to form the new government. And I just had a slight sort of tremor at that. I stopped what I was doing because I just thought there is something weird about this whole thing, which, again, is worth just dwelling on for one second.

14:13Andy Burnham:That's the line that you use when you have won an election, when you have come with all the applause, your new MPs, the people who've got sort of the hope and change in their spirit, in their blood, because you have asked the people and the people have mandated that you become the new prime minister. There is something weird about walking in and saying form the new government when there kind of is a government that he has already sort of been part of. You know, he has he has been part of the Labour Party, that the government that was enacting the programme is still the same government and the same manifesto that is enacting the thing he wants to do.

14:50Andy Burnham:And so there is something, you know, there is something missing from all this, which is the vote, the numbers, the kind of the ticking off of this is how democracy works. This is how things change hands. I know that it's not the first time that we've had a transitional prime minister, of course, but there's still something shocking just for that moment. I found myself just kind of going, there's something so formal about leaving the king and arriving. It's, as you say, it's not like it's not like the party threw him out because of misdemeanors. He didn't crash the economy and he didn't have a scandal.

15:25Andy Burnham:And it wasn't a parliamentary ethics committee that chucked him out. And it wasn't an election and it wasn't a Brexit vote. And it wasn't an inability to to to manage to get your vote through, you know, as Theresa May. I mean, there's nothing. I mean, John Major wrote in his memoirs after he left office that in that period after he became prime minister in November 1990, to Leo had the election in April 1992, that he felt he was living in sin with the electorate, which is interesting. Oh, I love that phrase. It's brilliant, isn't it? Yeah, it is. And I think prime ministers who do come in, I mean, there's obviously nothing constitutionally improper about anything that's happened.

16:00Lots of prime ministers come to office in midterm. Some go on to win elections, some don't. And that's completely fine. But undoubtedly, it is the case that I'm sure Andy Burnham will feel, and this is what I mean about this fundamental tension at the heart of the government. He's not just saying, right, we're going to, you know, the previous government, yeah, we're going to make some changes, but fundamentally it was on the right course. He's basically saying it was on the wrong course. He talked on Friday about the need to be more authentically Labour. Well, what's more authentically Labour about the manifesto that the government was elected on two years?

16:32You know, there are tensions. I'm sure he will feel that tension, which is why when you talk about that speech, John, you know, I think there'll be election next May, because I think that as long as he gets a bounce, I think he will feel that tension. And frankly, he will also partly maybe need the democratic energy in the election to actually renew not only his mandate, but what his programme is going to be. Because he's only had, I mean, you could say he's had 15 years to think about it. But in another sense, he's had two weeks to think about it. But Lewis, you said this is all proper and there's nothing unconstitutional.

17:02Absolutely true. But you pointed out yourself the exceptional nature of this, that six weeks ago, he was not even a member of Parliament. He didn't stand in the 24th general election. He's not bound by anything except what he wants to be bound by. And that is where I think there is a real sort of democratic deficit there for the British people. And I, you know, spoke to a lot of people who I don't think follow politics that closely who are saying, hang on, but he wasn't even an MP. How can you just have him now as the prime minister coming in with absolutely no, you know, kind of not bound to anything?

17:35Andy Burnham:Also, we live in an age where the only way you get elected is by saying, I'm promising you change. The other guys are all insiders. They're all establishment. I'm the outsider and here's change. So when he's saying the politicians of my generation has let the country down, implicitly, he is kind of talking about Starmer as well. I mean, he's directly talking about the man who he's just taken over from because otherwise, why would he have taken over? So he's, you know, there is something, I mean, there is something both admirable in the kind of chutzpah of it. We've talked about that before. He's a man who seizes the political initiative because he knows that you get one shot at this and if you don't do it, you don't do it.

18:15Andy Burnham:But also there is a ruthlessness, which is he has to throw his predecessor under the bus. Otherwise, what are you doing here? You have to reconcile those two things. It's the disingenuity of it all, isn't it? What I felt was like I spirited myself back in that sort of in a mode of thinking this was a things can only get better. Ninety seven moments. You know, they did. They always have the applause. They have the kind of supporters. They have the people standing there, the cheers or the rest of it. And it was then that I suddenly went, oh, actually, nothing has been won. Nothing has been won except for Makerfield.

18:49Well, what is also true is that he is, you know, he's not talking small, Burnham here. You know, I mean, he is he's he's seriously raising the expectations, you know, in every single direction, not only just talking about rewiring the British state, but also in terms of, you know, he has talked about basically achieving a whole not just moving on from this government. And this is what I mean about the mandate and about his program of ideas. is he's talking about ending an entire political consensus, as he sees it, a sort of 40-year period of neoliberalism. Now, that obviously sort of begs the question, was New Labour neoliberal?

19:25Was the Tony Blair and Brown government? Was the Starmer government neoliberal? You know, I think there's a strong argument to say that it certainly wasn't. But just listen to this again. This is from him on the step of Downing Street. And just consider, you know, the depth of ambition and the sweep of ambition here. When you remember that we're basically halfway through the parliament, it's quite difficult to govern and to get big legislation through the longer that parliament goes on. And as we've said, he doesn't actually have a mandate of his own. And we will take power out of here and carry it into every postcode in the land so that they can do more.

19:58And in doing more, build a new economy where we put life's essentials back under stronger public control to make them affordable to you again. re-industrialising Britain using public procurement to back British industry. Later this year I will bring forward a new plan for Britain, a 10-year plan, laying out a path from where we are now to where I believe we all want Britain to be, wherever we're coming from, whatever party we support. But I can do something to give people some breathing space now, some help with the cost of living. And I will set out some of those measures starting tomorrow, including how we pay for them.

20:58We will help more young people into work by changing the education system and giving them more support, more mental health support. And we will build more council homes. That is the fair and sustainable way to bring the welfare bill down, to meet our fiscal rules and to honour our commitments on defence to our international partners. have a whole panoply of different priorities and a pretty substantial agenda. And, you know, again, this, again, I think one of the kind of tensions of the upcoming government, and it is a sort of exciting moment whenever there's a change of government, you know, it always deserves a fair hearing.

21:47And, you know, and there is a, I sort of have a slightly different reaction to you. I mean, I sort of, I find it, I find it actually a moment in a sense to show the system is working, which is, I think that the previous government, you know, has run out of road. and this is a moment of potential renewal. But I do think that one of the tensions is going to be this devolution agenda is a really interesting one and it's one that he clearly believes in. I don't think there's any question about that. Of course, there is a potential tension, which is that he has set himself up there as someone who is going to bring really substantial change very quickly.

22:18Now, one of the ways you could argue that you need that or the easiest and quickest ways of doing that is if you have a strong, quite unyielding central state. That is certainly powerful central state. That's certainly what the Labour Party always used to believe in. There is a slight tension in sort of going, right, we're going to change everything in this direction. And we're going to do that by giving power away in this and that direction, potentially not just to the Labour Party and Labour mayors and Labour councils, but to reform mayors. And that is, I mean, I think a real test of this agenda, and I think it will come early on, assuming there isn't an election very soon, which is, OK, Andy Burnham, what is your devolution agenda?

22:54And are you happy to give it to your political opponents? And is that power going to be substantial? Because, you know, that will potentially mean they will do stuff that you don't like and they'll be pulling in a quite different direction. Look, you heard in that clip that we just played there, the sweep of Andy Burnham's ambition, the devolution part of it, council house building, you know, more kids, better mental health care, all these other things as well. And this fiscal event or whatever it's going to be to help people with the cost of living. Against that backdrop, Britain's cost of borrowing, selling debt on the money markets, on the bond markets, is much, much more expensive than, say, Germany.

23:33I think it's 4.95 percent in the UK, 2.95 percent for Germany. So we have to spend vast amounts of money to borrow money to do these things. And I don't know how much fiscal headroom there is, if he's going to stick to Rachel Reeves's rules, which he has said he's going to do. And so it's great that you've got this much more optimistic voice now coming out of the new prime minister. And Keir Starmer kind of just gave us gloom, I think, very, very quickly after winning the election. That's all good. But if you're going to raise expectations and then you find that the markets are going to say, I'm sorry, mate, you know, this is going to if you're going to start borrowing more, then we're going to charge even more to lend you money.

24:16then that is not a great place for Britain to be when it is already paying absolutely top dollar for government debt. And I think that that is a kind of, you know, a fundamental that Andy Burnham is going to face. You know, we'll get a name of a new chancellor, hopefully, very soon. And it will be interesting to see how the markets react to that. But it's not that easy just to suddenly turn these taps on when you're already, you know, you've got so little headroom.

24:43Andy Burnham:Sam Blewett has got the first scoop of the Burnham era. I'm told Andy Burnham used his first call with Donald Trump to invite the president to Manchester. Trump indicated he'd like to take the new PM up on the offer, according to one official with knowledge of their quote. Do you know what? There is a ghost hanging over this. And actually, it's not the ghost of Starmer or even Blair or even Brown. It is the ghost of Thatcher. and we've spoken you know previously many times on this about about the her legacy and how if you grew up in the south in the thatcher years you you saw thatcher as being the sort of person who got your own home the council home the big bang the city the sense that you could buy shares it was really exciting and if you're from the north if you're from the northwest like andy burnham if you're from the the mining areas you hear thatcher and you think it's everything that went wrong it's everything that was neglect.

25:37Andy Burnham:It's everything that was forgotten. And I do think when you're talking about the end of the neoliberal agenda, going back to the 80s, the 80s means one thing for British people. It means Thatcher. And so I don't think that's irrelevant, the fact that he wants Trump to come to Manchester. I think it's very much part of Bran Burnham, which is like, okay, that was the concentration on the South. That was the concentration on London. That was where neoliberalism was going wrong. I mean, even the stuff that he talks about, you know, the privatisation, the public, all that stuff is about don't take all the things that people should own and put it into private shares.