Starmer hands the torch to Burnham - does he have a plan?

0:02This is a global production. Keir Starmer made her feel like she wouldn't be in her job for very long because she had come into this deeply unstable party after an absolute disaster in an election. I think that Keir Starmer is an incredibly buttoned up person who is not free to vent emotional. The very man who has essentially ousted Keir Starmer is now full of praise on his last day. He was not a member of parliament standing for election in the 2024 general election. Does he feel he owes anything to the Labour Party manifesto? Most of us, Mr Speaker, can only dream of playing the role of Jude Bellingham, scoring the winning goal, leading our team to victory.

0:46Yet the Prime Minister did it. But politics, like football, is a ruthless game. And he's now been handed a red card by the 400 dodgy referees.

1:06What advice, Mr Speaker, does this Prime Minister have for the right honourable member for Makerfield to ensure that he, unlike himself, doesn't end up with an early bath? I think that's the first and sadly probably the last time I'll be compared to Jude Bellingham. There was a rare gentleness to Prime Minister's questions today. An elegiate quality as Keir Starmer's own MPs and indeed the leader of the opposition recognised this was his last one. And you wondered, listening as Keir Starmer listed the achievements of this Labour government, whether there was any remorse on the back benches for what they had done as they gave a fond farewell to the Prime Minister who won a landslide just two years ago.

2:00Welcome to the News Agents.

2:06The News Agents. It's John. It's meatless. And in the comments today were Keir Starmer's family watching in the public gallery. And it must have been such a bittersweet day for him because there was such affection that seemed to be on show for the man who was absolutely driven out of office. but a few weeks ago by Andy Burnham and this campaign that had gathered around him after he'd won the Makerfield by-election that he became this irresistible force. And so that is kind of must really hurt when you've led Labour to a landslide election victory. And at the same time, there was a softness, as you said, Emily, an almost elegiac quality, elegiac quality, to the way that MPs wanted to bid him a farewell that was simultaneously affectionate.

3:03It was warm. And Keir Starmer took it in very good part for the most part. Look, we should say that our editorial meeting began this morning around 9.30 with us discussing what the tone would be. And we couldn't imagine a scenario in which Kemi Badenoch didn't bite his head off. But remarkably, she didn't. And she even laughed about her own tone and said she'd been thinking a lot about her own tone. And she started with a quip about how Keir Starmer saw off Boris Johnson when he was leaving office. And I guess that was much more brutal than Kemi Bainock delivered today. And so, yes, it is very rare that you start to see, particularly in this performative session, the real character of our politicians.

3:53You don't often get to sort of see under the carapace of the fight. But I think this has been an odd week for lots of reasons. The murder of Anne Widdicombe, I think, stopped everyone in their tracks once again and certainly got all sides of the house to reflect on what an extraordinary odd role it is being a public figure in politics and fearing for your life because of your views and your public statements and the interviews that you give. And so I wonder whether that sort of slowed everyone down, even before we got to, as you say, Keir Starmer's last week in politics. And then there was that sense of the frenzy of excitement of the England game tonight, which meant that I think Jude Belliam probably had more name checks than Keir Starmer by the end of the half hour.

4:46and a sense that that was bringing all sides of the House, apart from the SNP, as Kevin Baden-Ock said, together again. Let's just hear that bit. No doubt he will be disappointed that he won't be emulating his hero, Harold Wilson, in winning multiple elections. However, we all hope that he may be about to emulate him in another way, by being the Prime Minister when England win the World Cup. That is something that every single one of us in this house should get behind, especially the SNP. It was a great quip. Kemi Badendock looked across to where the SNP sit to see if they were nodding their heads in agreement to that.

5:35I'm sure it'll be a difficult one for them to be cheering England onto the rafters tonight. But I hope they will. There was another bit which also I think spoke to something else. And Emily, you're so right to frame this in the juxtaposition of the events of the death of Anne Whittacombe and the last prime minister's questions, where that old phrase, the things that unite us are greater than those that divide us. I think they're elected representatives. This is our representative chamber where the people make the laws and decide the policy for the nation. and they do it willingly and they should be able to do it in safety.

6:13And I think that, you know, so much of what you get of the clash of ideas and the brutality of politics and all the rest of it, it's right. I mean, there are, you know, sharp words are exchanged on the floor of the Commons. But I think often unseen are some of the niceties and the friendliness that is shown. And Starmer and Baden-Ock both showed that in today's session. This is my last exchange with the right honourable gentleman, and I know how much his wife and children mean to him and that they are in the gallery today. As everyone here knows, our families make a huge sacrifice for our choice to enter public life.

6:52So I hope he will allow me to draw our time together to a close by thanking them for the love and support they have given him throughout his time in office. Can I thank her very much for that? It is the last question I'll face from the Leader of the Opposition. And so let me wish her well and her family. We have had robust exchanges across this dispatch box, but she has extended kindness to me privately at very difficult times, including when there was an attempt to burn down our family home. which deeply affected my family, she reached out to me. And when my brother died of cancer, she reached out to me privately, not across this dispatch box.

7:41And I thank her for that and the tribute that she's just made to my wife and children who mean the world to me. I do thank her for that. She knows this is robust and it has to be robust, and that's the way politics is done. But the kindnesses that sit behind it privately are often just as powerful, if not more powerful, and I thank her for that. I also stood at that dispatch box, Mr Speaker, for four years as leader of the opposition. I know firsthand it's the most difficult job in politics. And that is what she is doing. Look, there is something strangely cyclical about all this. I think that's the thing that you forget when you just come to the jousting matches.

8:17I mean, let's say for the record, you don't want it to be that nice every single week. You know, it would be too saccharine and it wouldn't really hold your attention at all. But there was, to coin our dear colleague Kay Burley's words once, there was a sadness in the eyes of Kemi Badenock, actually, as she looked across at Keir Starmer. And I think what each of them is reflecting on is that this is a very public job that you have to grow into in the full glare of, you know, the gaze of the whole country. and it is certainly true that Keir Starmer, as she said, made her feel like she wouldn't be in her job for very long because she had come into this deeply unstable party after an absolute disaster in an election.

9:05And she just said this one line, which was, life can come at you fast. She is now looking like the powerful one. She has got momentum. She has got a naturalness and I think a humour which will probably take her quite far against the man who thought he was going to be there with this massive majority for five years and is now out because of his own side, his own MPs. And so I think there was a reflection really of the whole nature, the whole fibrility of politics, not just in this country, but particularly in this country right now with the changes that we've seen in their sort of plentiful way.

9:44Kemi Baden-Ock tried to warn Labour MPs that changing leader is not necessarily a silver bullet. I think she was quietly referring to Liz Truss there. And having heard it, I say this to Labour MPs with as much goodwill as I can muster.

10:06We have been where you are. Changing prime minister is not a silver bullet. indeed it may be that the Labour Party's troubles are only just beginning. I think what you got there, and let us be gentle, in the mood of this Prime Minister's questions, what you got there was why Kemi Badenok is on the rise and people are talking up her fortunes, because there was a deafness of touch. I mean, I know it's a different thing to arguing over policy. And Keir Starmer was good, I thought, really good, and it was very nice. But again, he started doing lists about the reduction in waiting lists and stabilising the economy and the record investment in defence and all the other things that, you know, the shopping list that you get from him.

10:53He still has to push his legacy as the final memory. He still has to push his legacy and trying to be, you know, I left this country in a better state than when I found it. And that will be what he hopes people will remember him by less the fact that he was booted out by his own back benches. And so I think you saw Kemi Badenock at her very best today and with a sort of delicacy of touch, which you don't always associate with her. Yeah. And I think two things have made this easier in terms of something that feels more bipartisan. I mentioned the death of Anne Widdicombe. The other thing that has weirdly created a sort of spirit of unity between Labour and the Conservatives are the woes of one Nigel Farage.

11:39And so actually, you have this very strange sort of emerging spectre, which plays to Nigel Farage's own rhetoric about a sort of, you know, funnily enough, an establishment stitch up, which is that, frankly, neither the Conservatives nor Labour want to see Farage succeed. They all stayed away from the by-election. We know all the main parties won't be fighting in Clacton. And they have all essentially united by, if not behind Count Binface himself, behind the idea of the Bin being the victor. So this was an exchange that took us into the man who is very rarely seen in the Commons, the MP for Clacton himself.

12:22If you want to lead this country, if you want to lead this country, you should set out your plans to do so. We have. But one politician intends to spend the summer avoiding scrutiny, refusing to set out his plans. So does he not agree that what the country deserves is a televised debate between Nigel Farage and Count Binface?

13:00Mr Speaker, they intend to spend the summer arguing with a bin. My advice to everyone is put your vote in the bin. Labour is backing bin face, I think, is the headline there. Well, I guess they really mean it. They don't want anyone to vote, right? Put your vote in the bin. For the first time ever, all the major parties are saying, don't even bother turning up at the ballot because it's not a real election. Well, no, I think they're not. I don't think that's what they're saying. You think they're saying go to the bin? I think they're saying, yeah, if you want to stop Nigel Farage, vote bin face.

13:32I think that's exactly what they're saying. So you get a general impression of the timbre of Prime Minister's questions today, that they were enjoying themselves. It was sort of end of term festivities when, you know, the teachers suddenly say we can muck around and we can have a game. They put Frozen on for you. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And but Keir Starmer had a few words before he left and there was a standing ovation for him at the end of it. Mr. Speaker, this will be my last answer from this dispatch box. Every prime minister knows when they take up the torch that the day will come when they have to pass it on.

14:07that day has come for me. This is the end of my political journey. In six years went from historic defeat in 2019 to historic victory in 2024 and in two years in government I leave the country in better shape than I found it. I am proud of everything that we have achieved. Mr Speaker, can I just take time to say to you, Mr Speaker, and all those who work for the House and our constituency offices, thank you for all your hard work. To our civil service, thank you also for all your hard work. To my political team, many of them here today, who came on this journey with me, thank you so much for everything you have done and being prepared to walk through fire for me.

15:03To my colleagues on these benches, I am proud of all we have achieved together and proud of each and every one of you. To my successor and each of you, I will give my full support. To all colleagues across the House, can I wish you good health and happiness. To all those in the gallery whose lives have been changed or improved by this Labour government, and all across the country who struggle to be seen or heard, you're the reason I came into politics. To my wife and children, I love you. Goodbye.

15:54Look, it wasn't Obama, it wasn't Blair and it wasn't Boris Johnson. It was the most clear goodbye you could imagine. It was a man who kept it short and succinct, but genuinely believes that those six years have been transformative for his party and hopes that they have been transformative for the country. And I guess that is the fulsome applause and indeed the standing ovation. And in some cases, the tears that you had from his MPs, because they will find many things to thank him for today. But it probably won't change their mind on what they have to do. You're absolutely right. I think that Keir Starmer is an incredibly buttoned up person who is not free to vent emotional feeling.

16:40He's not an oratory man, really. And he's not an orator. He hasn't got those soaring kind of flowing words that take you to different places and make you dream and whatever else in the way that Obama seemed to do that so effortlessly. it was workmanlike it was solid it was decent and that is I think part of the brand of Starmer of who he is of what he is and you know I'm sure he must be hurting inside like crazy and furious and raging at what his backbenchers have done to him but he wasn't going to show any of that today he's just saying you've got my wholehearted support I will get immediately behind Andy Burnham.

17:20I will give him my advice in private, not out loud, if he wants it. And if he doesn't want it, I'll stay quiet. And the wheels of politics never stop turning. And so after the break, we're going to talk about what comes next.

17:49Let's finish where I started The Liverpool supporters were blamed for harming their own fellow supporters At a football match That is what was done that was left to stand for all of those years. These families here tonight had to live with that for all of those years. Imagine what that must have felt like. We have had a situation in this country where people suffer the trauma of the initial bereavement, the incident that took their loved ones away. Then they are re-traumatised by the behaviour of the state. We can't take that hurt away tonight. But we can put decency back at the heart of the British state.

18:34And that is what this bill does. And I finish again by praising the Prime Minister for making it happen. And this truly is his legacy. So one more political obit there to Keir Starmer, and that is from the incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham. And it is worth a pause for a moment just to think what an extraordinary sort of exchange this is now, that the very man who has essentially ousted Keir Starmer is now full of praise on his last day, one of his last piece of legislation in the Commons. And it's also a reminder, I think, that we know very little about Andy Burnham, about the man who's coming in to be our next prime minister, except for his campaigning moments.

19:20He has been a real force of nature, whether it's on the Hillsborough Bill, which just got through the Commons yesterday, which states that there cannot be a cover up by the state. I mean, it seems extraordinary that you even have to make that into a law, but that is essentially what this bill does. It looks at the agony that the families of Hillsborough were put through, not just after they lost loved ones, but after they were essentially defamed and not believed and lied to and treated like trash. And so this is a sort of writing of that. And we heard in Andy Burnham's words there, there are other campaigns that he is behind the infected blood scandal he talked about.

19:58We know he's behind the nuclear testing of veterans. There are a lot of things where his campaigning voice comes through very solidly. But he has now to make that switch. Yeah. Right. You're governing. Yeah. And that is going to be an enormous change. And the other thing that I, you know, just so remarkable that he was not an MP. He was not a member of parliament standing for election in the 2024 general election. Does he feel he owes anything to the Labour Party manifesto? What mandate does he have? I mean, at least Liz Truss could say I fought in the last election and I'm here as a Conservative MP and this is what I want.

20:36And set out my stall in the leadership. And set out my stall in the leadership. There has been no leadership contest. There's been no statement of what my policies will be. We are going into this absolutely blind and we don't know who are going to be taking up the key roles. And, you know, maybe we should be thinking in the big policy picture of what is Andy Burnham going to do? Well, frankly, we've got no idea because he hasn't made a policy speech. We do know, though, something about the battles that are going on behind the scenes over who are going to get the key jobs. And from that, we may be able to discern some of the policy directions.

21:13Yeah. We can probably play you a little bit of a video that he posted on his social media, which was about the Gaza issue. And the extraordinary thing was that it was so sort of rounded and complete in its messaging. It talks about Gaza and the awful starvation that's been going on there and the awful destruction that has been going on in Gaza. But then he also had to acknowledge, rightfully, the killings of October the 7th by Hamas. And then he also started paying tribute to those who've been victims of antisemitism and the rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia in the UK. And so you ended up watching this video and thinking, wait, what are you doing?

21:51What are you actually saying here? Are you trying to speak to the people in your party who didn't think that enough was said over Gaza? Although, to be fair, Keir Starmer did recognise the Palestinian state. One of his actions when he was prime minister doesn't actually speak very much about that. And so you've got this specter of Burnham who is at the moment sort of trying to be all things to all men and women, who's trying to be the people pleaser of like, I haven't forgotten that. And I know you're hurting about that. And I've also registered that. And we must do more about that. And just by very nature, the very nature of what will happen in the next sort of week, he will have to make enemies because he will have to make choices.

22:29And it's the choices that nobody wants to face because at the moment everyone's on side because they think they might be chancellor or they might get a big grant or they might be seeing their policies push forward. And that will inevitably create, I guess, you know, the first round of enemies. Right. And I think that that is where the battle is at its most keen right now is over who is going to become the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is going to be the person who is drawing up the economic policy, who is going to be the person saying this government department can have that, but the other one can't have something else.

23:06And I think that that is where there are differences emerging between different parts of the Burnham camp. And, you know, if you take Lou Haig, who we've said is an absolutely instrumental figure, she's very much of the soft left. But James Purnell, who's coming in as the chief of staff, was a very much a Blairite minister in his day when he was in Tony Blair's government. Are they aligned on who the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be? And so these are the questions of, and, you know, essentially what all boils down to, are you going to put Ed Miliband in as the Chancellor of the Exchequer against the will of certain of the public sector unions, or are you going to defy them?

23:50You know, some people are reporting that it's all a done deal and Ed is out. Others are saying, no, no, no, there's a massive rearguard action being fought that you've got to install Ed as the Chancellor. The fact that Ed Miliband has in the last few days sort of changed his stance on North Sea oil and drilling suggests that even Ed doesn't know whether it's him or not, because there is still wriggle room. And we keep on hearing, I mean, we should say we don't know. You know, it is not a state secret that every journalist in the country is guessing. I was told quite definitively that Siobhan Mahmood would be coming into the chancellorship, you know, I think about three weeks ago.

24:24But I think it's fair to say we actually don't know, possibly because Andy Burnham doesn't know. And certainly the characters involved don't know because he has tried to keep everything loose enough to allow him to have flexibility with his own choices. As soon as we know that, we'll understand more what is in his mind. But look, we're not talking about September or October here. Yeah. It is, you know, it is Wednesday afternoon at quarter past two as I sit here with you in the studio. on Monday morning, Andy Burnham is going to be the prime minister. I mean, this is really coming at you fast. And we don't know what any of these things are going to be.

25:01If there had been a general election campaign, the shadow chancellor would have been told, you will be the chancellor if we win the election, as Rachel Reeves was prior to the general election. We just don't know what's going to happen on Monday morning. And you would have thought there would have been a certain amount of trying to kind of roll the pitch to get people ready for the idea it's going to be person X or person Y who'll be taking over because the bond markets, the stock markets will be looking at what Britain has decided and taking a view on that. And that could affect our cost of borrowing.

25:35It's already way higher than it is in Germany, for example. Is it going to go higher still if it's Ed Miliband or do you put in someone else who the market? I mean, these are huge things. And as I say, it's Wednesday lunchtime now and Monday he's the prime minister. Yeah. And if you are a member of the cabinet, as we speak on Wednesday afternoon, you don't know if you've got a job on Monday. You don't know whether you're doing your work at the weekend. You don't know if you're in the post. I mean, I guess, you know, that is how British politics has worked when it comes to elections. Right. You don't know if you're going to be back at the job after an election or not.

26:09We haven't had an election. We've had this, and it is worth just sort of remarking on that, it has been bloodless. You called it brutal earlier today. And I can't really describe if it is brutal or if it is sort of gentle. It's this extraordinary thing because the ultimate thing has happened. It has been a decapitation. It has been a deposition. They have kicked out the guy that won them the election. And yet, if you listen to the speeches, they're all wishing each other well, thanking you for your time, you've done amazing things for the party. And we don't really yet know the sort of simmering anger from many of those who might have been deep-kir loyalists who are willing to give Andy Byrne a go until they don't get their jobs back, who then come out and say, I knew he'd be terrible.