545. Burnham Beats Reform: Britain’s Next Prime Minister?

0:00Labour have won the crucial by-election in Makerfield and they have won it big. Nearly 25 ,000 votes for Andy Burnham, 55 % of all ballots cast. These are normally words that would delight the leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister Keir Starmer. But it was in effect Andy Burnham's application to the Labour Party to oust Keir Starmer and put him into Downing Street instead. So does this thumping victory won in an area where reform battered Labour in the local elections in May spell the end of the Starmer premiership? How has it come to this and what happens next? Also, what does the big win for the Tories in Aberdeen South against the SNP mean for the UK and the Scottish government's policies on energy?

0:47It was quite a night in British politics.

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3:26Welcome to The Rest is Politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. So, Rory, Andy Burnham has won and he has won big.

3:35Rory Stewart:Amazing. So just to put it in context, this is the by-election in Makerfield. And this was prime reform territory. So two thirds of voters in this constituency had voted for Brexit. And in the local elections very recently, just a few weeks ago, Labour were 20 points behind reform. so reform could have won this seat comfortably but Andy Burnham has won this with a 20 point lead he's increased his party vote share by 10 and this is something right against the national trend so as you I'm sure are going to get on to Aberdeen South as you mentioned is now Labour went down 19 points and it went down 18 points in our breath but it went 10 points up in this constituency with Andy Burnham.

4:24Rory Stewart:And he basically wipes out the Greens, the Lib Dems, and the Conservatives. The Greens, Lib Dems got about 1%, Conservatives got about 2%, and even Restore and Reform together wouldn't have been enough to beat him. So it's looking very, very strong. There are some caveats around the corner, but pretty strong. Back over to you. Yeah, I think a lot of the, when you talk about the two Scottish by-elections, which were caused by former Westminster MPs winning seats in the Holyrood Parliament in the recent Scottish elections. I think a lot of tactical voting going on there and a lot of tactical voting to stop reform in Makerfield.

5:00But listen, I was talking to people in the campaign last night and even late on, they were very confident Andy Burnham was going to win, but they were worried that a win might be tainted if Restore Votes, the far, far right party, ate into reform the just right, very right-wing populist party, and that became a deciding factor. But it wasn't needed because, as you say, 55 % of the vote meant they didn't get near. I've been checking a few historical footnotes, Rory. You've got to go back to the time when I was one year old, Torrington, 1958, Mark Bonham Carter, one for the Liberals, for a bigger differential turnout from a general election to a by-election.

5:40What does a differential turnout mean, sorry? The increase in the vote in a by-election as opposed to the parliamentary election is normally lower in a by-election. This is considerably higher. So he's driven out people who didn't vote last time around. And then to go back for a rise in the actual numbers for a by-election candidate standing for the party of government going up on this scale, you've got to go back to Labour, Kevin McNamara, Hull, 1966, a year more remembered for football rather than politics.

6:12Rory Stewart:The two things you're saying there is that apart from the actual results, the two norms in a by-election are usually, or sometimes fewer people turn out than turn out for a general election. And usually in by-elections, there's a tendency to vote against the party of government. It's often a protest vote. So if you were just running it normally, you would have looked at three things. You would have said, well, it's a by-election, probably a bit anti-government, probably lower turnout. And then you would have looked at the local elections in May and you would have said Labour was trailing 20 points behind reform.

6:42Rory Stewart:And remember, of course, in the background is this by-election Gorton and Dent, which they didn't let Andy Burnham run in and which Labour lost. And, you know, there were a lot of people at times saying, oh, there's nothing to say that if he had run, if the NEC had allowed him to run, he really would have won. I think the evidence, I would suggest, points to the idea that he probably would have won big there too. Back over to you. Yeah, so I think the exam question that is keeping quite a lot of Labour people awake at night is who can stop reform. And the stat of all the different stats we can look at that they'll be looking at most closely is this one, 23 % swing from reform to Labour since May in the seats that reform took from Labour in those local elections.

7:27And as you say, Andy Byrne are more than doubling Labour's share of the vote. And this seat, by the way, I'm indebted to Peter Kellner for this. I'd forgotten this. But this seat was the sixth, had the sixth highest reform vote in the last general election. So I guess what MPs are seeing and thinking about this morning is this, that there is a way to stop reform. I've always felt that there is two. But they're thinking Andy Burnham may be essential to that way. So the pressure on Keir Starmer is huge. There's no doubt about that. Numbers matter in politics. Polls come and go, but these are real numbers.

8:04And the truth is Andy Burnham has done better than expected. So then we ask, what happens now? And the truth is, nobody knows. I've talked to a lot of people. I've talked to a lot of the key people. As late as Wednesday, Keir Starmer was gathering in MPs and telling them, whatever the result, if there is a challenge, I'm going to fight it. His one public response so far is a social media post. We're recording this in the morning after the by-election. is a social media post saying voters chose Labour's campaign of hope and optimism over division and hate. But of course, if you've been to Makefield, you might see that at all the billboards and all the posters around there, it doesn't say Labour, it says Andy.

8:49So all depends now what these key figures decide to do. I don't believe Andy Burnham wants to make that challenge, but he will make clear if they do have a conversation that he's got the numbers if that is needed. And the truth is, you know this in politics, MPs can be very herd-like. Those numbers are likely to be growing. I don't think he'll do, I very much doubt we'll see him much over the media, other than maybe going for a run or having a pint or whatever he might do, because he'll be waiting to see what unfolds the same as everybody else. So key to this Keir Starmer's reaction, key also West Streeting's reaction.

9:26But I think to some extent, I suspect this takes West Streeting pretty much out of the game. And if I had to put my life on it, I think Andy Burnham could be there by conference.

9:38Rory Stewart:Okay. And conference is October, right? It's late September, last week of September, yeah. So really big news. I mean, that's a new prime minister for the UK, something that again will puzzle the world because Keir Starmer won a really big majority, looked like he could sit there for five years and, you know, Britain's going through prime ministers at a kind of Belgian Italian rate at the moment. But I think the logic of this, and obviously MPs can behave in very illogical ways and Labour MPs can behave in illogical ways like anyone else. But if I keep coming back to two drums that I've been banging, the first is Keir Starmer cannot win the next election.

10:17Rory Stewart:The guy, for his many merits, there are many things that are likable about Keir Starmer. He's just no good as a prime minister. He's not a winning phenomenon. His net popularity is terrible. He can't make a speech. He doesn't have any clear definition. I can't find anyone in any meeting I go to who can tell me what his economic policy is, what his growth policy is, what it stands for. So my analogy has always been, look, with Keir Starmer, it's a losing proposition. the ships heading into the iceberg. Now, getting off and getting on the lifeboats may not work, Andy Burnham may not work, but there's no serious alternatives to staying with Starman.

10:55Rory Stewart:The second thing I think we've been saying is that if Burnham wins well, and he's won really well here, it's answered the number one big question in politics, which is, can you take on reform? And what I love about it, to sound like a bit of an Andy Burnham fanboy for a moment, is that he's not done it in the way that some of the people advising the conservative party would have said is the only way of beating reform. He's done it with a pretty decent, straightforward campaign. He hasn't done any crazy. I mean, there's lots of temptations. If you're taking on reform in a constituency, I imagine the pressure on you to think, well, I can sound a little bit more right-wing and radical.

11:35Rory Stewart:I can steal a little bit of reform's language here. I can surprise people because I can count on my Labour vote and I can bring over reform by. He hasn't done that. It was a pretty sunny, I mean, sorry, on the ground, it felt very nasty. But the way Burnham's conducted himself has been pragmatic, progressive, laid back, and he's won big. And I think that's the recipe for British politics. I think what Starmer got wrong was that he lost that sense of being a happy warrior. He lost the sense of being able to communicate well, having a sense of hope, and that actually Morgan McSweeney was the kind of worst of all worlds if what he was doing is saying the way to beat reform is to on certain issues sound like a kind of mini reform without being able to sound the more optimistic notes back over you yeah i mean i guess look kia starmer will have a lot of deep thinking to do in the next few days and will doubtless be talking to all sorts of people and he'll probably be feeling very very angry and he can be he can get very angry kia and the thing is that you know he's probably thinking, I led the Labour Party to a landslide victory when they told us that we were finished.

12:45And they said that we could never do it. And I did it. The economy actually was beginning to pick up a bit until Donald Trump did his stupid bloody war in Iran. Reform have made their numbers rise on the back of small boats and immigration. And actually, we've done some pretty tough things and we get the numbers going in the right way. The National Health Service numbers going the right way, there's lots that he can point to. The trouble is, as you say, when you're out and about, and I'm the same as you, I'm always talking to people about what they think. And even people who have often benefited from Labour government policy changes aren't even necessarily aware that they've happened.

13:22And that is a sort of political communications issue. The other reason he'll be feeling angry, but this works both ways. And I think, you know, because obviously a lot depends now and how these two deal with each other. The fact is there is next to no trust between them, and that is a problem, and that's a political failure. I remember quite a long time ago being up in Manchester. I mean, it was after Keir Starmer became leader, but before he became prime minister, I remember seeing Andy Burnham and him saying, oh God, the way these guys operate, unless you're 100 % echo everything they say, you get stuff through the press, blah, blah, blah.

13:58But talk to Keir Starmer's people and they'll say, bloody Andy Burnham, he's impossible to deal with. Anything you do, he trims a little bit this way, he trims a little bit that way. But the truth is that trust has broken down. Now, I think it is possible, you know, we talked about this and I think I got it wrong about the Gorton and Denton thing, when I actually thought I could see why Keir Starmer was getting the national executive to block Andy Burnham from standing. I think it's possible that back then he might have been able to say, Andy, you show you can win, win, come in, and I give you a big job in the cabinet, and then let's see how things go.

14:33I'm afraid I think the process around then is the reason why Keir Starmer apparently now having said to Andy Burnham, why do you come into the cabinet if you get back into Parliament? Andy Burnham is making clear, no. And in his acceptance speech, he had this line, you know, we'll get no second chance. Now, that's a deliberate way to accept you can't change your prime minister every five minutes like the Tories did. But he's basically saying, I am your second chance. So this really is hard, brutal politics now. He's going to arrive in Parliament on Monday. He's going to take his seat. Does Keir Starmer sit in Parliament for that?

15:16Or does he kind of, you know, smile happily? And of course, he's not bound to set a timetable for his departure. But that is basically what Andy Burnham and those who are supporting him are going to be asking for.

15:31Rory Stewart:Two things that I was thinking when you were talking. As you say, he blew it by refusing to let him run in Gorton and Denton. I mean, again, it's a classic sign of the sort of McSweeney mindset going wrong. I suppose the cliche there is kind of mafia cliche. If you're going to strike at the king, right, you must kill him. So if you've tried to exclude and destroy Andy Burnham and stop him coming in once and you failed, you can't then hope to control him when he comes in the second time. I think the other thing is that all those stories about anger sound absolutely identical to Joe Biden. I mean, almost phrase by phrase what she said there, you know, number one, you know, I was the guy that beat Donald Trump.

16:13Rory Stewart:And I'm not going to give credit for the fact that I brought the Democrats in. And number two, the only reason this thing is going wrong is because of these MAGA guys. Number three, they're getting support because of immigration, but I'm doing stuff on immigration. I'm almost identical to Republicans on immigration. All that is understandable, but the reason it sounds like Joe Biden, it's the anger of somebody who is trying to cling on when the party and the country knows they can't win the next election. and they need to be got rid of. And their anger is that people aren't being grateful towards them.

16:49Rory Stewart:But that's not legitimate in a football manager or a CEO or a prime minister. You're not there for the gratitude. You're there to win. And you can't win. And like Biden, the longer this dude clings on, the worse. Because once you've lost it, there's no point being a sort of lame duck prime minister or president. How do you feel looking in on it with the notion that they could replace Keir Starmer as Labour leader and therefore as Prime Minister without any contest at all? I believe in contests. I mean, I think that's one of the things that went wrong with Kamala Harris. She never got a chance to really show whether she could beat it.

17:32Rory Stewart:The country never really felt there was any contest. I think Theresa May coming in with a coronation was awkward. If you remember with that run after Boris Johnson fell out, Andrea Leadsom fell out and she basically just came through. I'm less worried than you are by this idea of people knocking bits off each other. I Let's my counter example. So when I was running against in that leadership in 2019, of course, everybody in the Conservative Party was saying, could you leadership candidates stop attacking each other? This is very bad for our brand. Everybody hates us attacking each other. But the reality is that Boris Johnson came out of a pretty brutal campaign where we were all knocking bits off each other and won big.

18:15Rory Stewart:And I think people sort of understand that that can happen. So let me jump in there then, Rizzo. If you were sitting in a room with Keir Starmer now and you were his best friend, would you be saying to him, he should stand in that contest, even if he thinks he might lose? And if you were West Streeting's best friend, would you be saying to him, look, Andy cannot come in and just have a coronation. At least somebody like you has to stand and offer a different vision for the Labour Party. Would you advise him to do it? I think the latter probably makes more sense, because if the story is that Keir Starmer can't make it, making him go through a painful campaign, pretending to run when nobody believes he should be prime minister doesn't make sense.

18:57Rory Stewart:I think West Streeting story is a good one because presumably that's what your friend Tony Blair would like to see. I mean, I guess that's what his letter was about. There is another story that Labour needs to get its head around and I think Andy Byrne needs to answer, which is, is there a radically different economic policy that a center-left party could pursue? Could they have a different energy policy? Could they have a different tax policy? Could they have a different innovation policy? What calls is he going to make on tech, non-doms, energy, foreign policy, all this sort of stuff that Blair thing was trying to stir up?

19:37Rory Stewart:So I don't like the idea that somebody, And I also think that there's nothing for Burnham to be afraid of. He's on a winning streak. I'd take the risk if I was him, because it looks sort of slightly pathetic to just be crowned. And I'd certainly, if I was Burnham, be saying, bring it on. I'd love to have the debate. I don't want to be crowned. I'd like people to run against me. I don't think that's where he is. I think he thinks that the, I think his view is probably that in a way, this contest that he's just won and the scale of the win is more significant for the country than a debate, internal debate, that could tear the party apart and get people to say crazy things because they're appealing to a different sort of electorate.

20:21So it's a kind of risk. It is a risk both ways. And also what's interesting, when you were going through all the sort of policy on this, policy on that, will he change this? Will he change that? I know a couple of times the Conservatives got away with resisting the pressure of saying, look, if you change your prime minister, you have to have a general election. We shouldn't underestimate the pressure that there will be. And with a media that is going to be, if Andy Burnham does replace Keir Starmer, the massive hostility of most of the right-wing media to Keir Starmer translates automatically.

20:50The sort of Russian propaganda, et cetera, operations that have been running and of which we've learned more in recent times, they're going to transfer. So he's got to have in him. He's obviously got confidence. I agree with you about the nature of his campaign. I'd have been very tempted running that campaign to have taken all sorts of lumps off reform, really tried to have made Farage and crypto and all that stuff really tried to get in there. And he resisted all that. But I think in getting democratic legitimacy on the back of one by-election of 60 ,000 voters, whatever it is, is, I think it's a stretch.

21:26So, but, you know, again, if I had to put my life on it, we're living in such unpredictable, volatile times. But my money at the moment probably would be if he is going to be prime minister in the next few months on a coronation. My son Rory's just sent me a thing. Betfair has him 94 % to be the next prime minister. That means, Rory, that you don't want to, don't do a Kamala Harris style bet on that one, please. Just don't do it. you mentioned there the the other thing that i think is really significant out of this violation and which won't i don't think get the maybe the debate that it that it should i've been saying to you for some time that i think we are through peak reform and i know that's counterintuitive because they keep coming top in the polls but i think reform have a ceiling um and i think some of this stuff i think the money stuff has damage for us i think the russia stuff does damage for I actually think that the Jenrick, Braverman, Zahawi, these Tory retreads coming over and suddenly being the big figures in reform.

22:34And as if we're so stupid to hear Jenrick talk about immigration when he was the immigration minister responsible for some of the disasters that he now says are disasters. And an interesting thing, we have James Cleverley on leading this week. I noticed him, he last night posted a couple of council by-elections in Essex, which reform won in the local elections. They've had by-elections, presumably because the candidates have thought, oh, I didn't expect to win, I don't want to do it. And they've now lost and they've gone back to the Conservatives. So I think this is really bad for reform. Farage will do his usual thing.

23:08I bet he goes to ground for a bit. He'll hope all the focus is on De Burnham rather than him. So let's take a break and then we come back. We'll talk about this election in Aberdeen South. Very, very interesting. Tories beating the SNP and also will maybe focus on some of the challenges that Andy Burnham would face if he does replace Keir Starmer. Absolutely. Looking forward to talking about it after the