575. Alastair Reacts to Burnham’s Speech and Rory’s Viral Stare

24:51Rory Stewart:People on similar incomes in America identify as being middle class. They overestimate their class. And in Britain, people underestimate their class. They like to call themselves working class when in sociological terms, they'd be different. And we've got a great interview coming next week where we get into this discussion with a fantastic lady. And she is with Shabana Mahmood, the homosecond, and she gives you a very good slapdown, Roy. I've really enjoyed it. Very good slapdown by that. Anyway, let me make the critique more serious, which isn't this sort of tone. It's that the 1970s, which he's implicitly seems to sort of gesture towards, And that's where he's quite clever because it's a little opaque.

25:33But if he's saying the problem was neoliberalism and basically Thatcher, it's worth remembering the 1970s were not that great.

25:42Rory Stewart:1970s, we had effective top rates of tax at 98%. We had inflation running at 25 % a year. We lost 75 % of the value of the British Stock Exchange in the early 1970s. we had a call in the IMF. And incomes grew pretty steeply during the 1980s. And actually, this last 40 years, if you took the snapshot of 1991 to 2008, which was the kind of height of the neoliberal consensus, was the first time since 1870 when British GDP per capita was growing faster than that of the US, where our productivity was the second highest in the OECD. And most economist looking at the glory days that he's talking about, 1945 to 1980, would say that, yes, there were great strengths in terms of equality.

26:33Rory Stewart:Britain became a much more equal society. The NHS was created. But it was also a moment where British industry really struggled, innovation struggled. We got stuck in some very strange situations with unions. And people were pretty depressed about the future of the British economy when many other countries, Germany, Japan, and then increasingly the Asian tigers were shooting ahead. So there's something which if you're, you know, gentle, soft, right, pro-business person, you're sort of slightly thinking, well, you know, because he also said one of the things he was against with Thatcher was deregulation.

27:12Rory Stewart:Most businesses in Britain feel we are much, much too regulated. And that one of the ways in which we could get growth is by quite a lot of deregulation so um that that would anyway that's over to you no i i that's why i say i think that is maybe where the tories will try to go but it'll also be very interesting to see whether farage who's from his initial reaction seems to think well i just carry on banging my old drum i don't need to adapt to this whether actually that adds to this sense that I think is developing about Farage that he's slightly yesterday's man in the political debate which is why I thought it was clever that Andy Burnham didn't even mention his name there has been a lot of talk of Farage at this conference I've heard a lot of people say oh Farage there's Farage that but not not so much in the speeches but just around the place because he's still probably a bigger threat than um than than the Tories but no I I was I left kind of pretty energized by the whole thing and uh but i i think i think on the the the electoral just to go back to electoral reform that that is another by the way where you shouldn't think despite the fact it was one of the 11 standing ovations it was one of the 11 standing ovations because people were just loving the boldness of the whole speech right but i saw quite a few people standing up who i know are very much opposed to electoral reform but your point about winning arguments.

28:38This is what, to me, is what politics is at its best. It's all about is having really big arguments over time. And that's why the chat I had with Amish Fortner about, you know, the TikTok generation. Well, Andy Burnham's very, very good on social media. But what he's done today has shown that there is a lot more to him than that. And you and I have always known that there is. And the other thing I like about this, going back to the... And if people haven't listened to the series with Steve Rotherham, I mean, he really does understand Andy Burnham. And what I like about the sort of Andy Burnham, Steve Rotham stories, they wrote that book, Head North.

29:13And so much of what we've seen today that we're sort of saying is new, and it is new a lot of it, but it's actually stuff that he was writing about back then,

29:22Rory Stewart:including electoral reform, including housing, including pensions. Yeah, maybe the speech was so confident, so fluent, and so authentic, because basically he's been giving versions of that speech in Manchester for many years now yeah um and it's really he's really sat with it and he really knows how those those values and ideas connect on the working class point did you did you were you sort of thinking that actually there's a middle class a middle class out there that maybe is thinks this isn't speaking to them because the care thing the care service speaks to the middle class as well as working class people well i think what spoke to everybody and would speak to the middle class and would speak to someone like me is the idea of solidarity and unity and union.

30:07Rory Stewart:You know, the strongest bits for someone like me is that he's describing a society where we all have obligations towards each other. I mean, I'm very happy to pay the top rate of tax so that other people can have good public services. I'm very happy. And I think many people will feel like this. Maybe not, you know, the full libertarian right. But I think a lot of gentle, self-right people feel that it's right that they pay 45 income tax and that and that and i think we all share his horror with homelessness i mean and a real sense that that's something that's fixable and that he pretty much fixed in manchester i mean there's been some debates around that but he made a lot of progress well part of what happened in manchester is that because people knew that manchester had this scheme to get people off the streets and give them accommodation that people were coming from outside manchester the numbers went right down and then went back up again.

30:59There's a really, you know, I mentioned in the, was it last week I talked about James Graham's new play about Keynes. Yeah, yeah. I know Keynes was a liberal, but I really do think Labour ministers should go and watch this play. But it was really interesting how Keynes' big thing was about the purpose of economics being to have a good life for ordinary people. And I don't know whether Andy's aware of the play, but he used that phrase twice about, you know, about giving people a good life. and i just think that is that should be their guiding light i'm putting housing at the center

31:29Rory Stewart:of it i mean one of the things he does in his speech is it's not all um a sort of complete logical argument right it's not actually true that maybe that maybe housing does quite as much work as he thinks it does but it's a good idea it's a lovely thing to get behind and it's and it's an offer. I mean, if you can, I do think that the universal offer, he's got an instinct for that, that if you can say to everybody in the country, look, we may not be able to sort out inequality. We may not be able to sort out growth in the way that you want, but we can say that you're going to get a good house. You will get good healthcare.

32:12Rory Stewart:You'll get a decent care system. you'll get good education. That's where I hear Tessa Jal. I mean, that's what she was always saying to me, her endless test around saying, would I put my mother or my grandmother in this school, in this house? And he, of course, started as a researcher. Can we take a quick break, though, Alastair? Maybe after the break, I'd love to talk to you about the Labour Party politics and where he might get into trouble. Because in the end, that's what undid Kiyosama. It wasn't the public. He had this huge majority. It was the party itself. So maybe a quick break and then back for more.

32:47Rory Stewart:Okay. See you shortly. This episode is brought to you by Lloyds. One thing that politics teaches you is that certainty, predictability is often an illusion. At Lloyds Market Summit earlier this month, I sat down with Katty Kay from the Rest is Politics US and we got into a very interesting discussion about the challenges that chief execs from large companies and institutions face every day. Governments come and go. Markets can be unpredictable. The conversation kept coming back to the same point. Ambitious organisations need more than capital alone. And one of the key issues for leaders of large corporates and institutions the world over is this.

33:24Rory Stewart:How do you act when certainty never arrives? Well, the best leaders don't wait for that certainty. Instead, they build confidence through insight, expertise and trusted relationships. Whether it's through summits or their insights hub, Lloyd's helps their clients understand the forces shaping global markets. Search Lloyd's Corporate for daily global market analysis, the download on tokenization and how to manage your company's energy transition, all from Lloyd's Corporate and Institutional Banking. Bank on Lloyd's.

34:08The strategic struggle between Britain and Russia. We assess our Prime Minister. With high confidence it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. The man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. You've got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing!

34:39Rory Stewart:We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today. And disseminated into an operation order. Or frago. Or frago that says to kill the president of Russia. Yes. New from Goalhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off? You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom McDuff. Duffy. An audio drama journey like no other. Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons. Devised as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller. Where Britain plays its strongest hand against its strongest foe. Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.

35:42Rory Stewart:Welcome back to the rest of the politics for me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. Okay, Alistair, this is the thing that worries me. So Keir Starmer won a stonking majority, had a majority of over 100. And he was taken down because the Labour Party turned against him. And actually, I got this, I had a conversation with one of the whips shortly after Starmer went, he's actually a Tory whip, who said the point is that they don't have a working majority anymore. In fact, nobody has a working majority. Politics has changed so much that none of us can tell any of our MPs what to do. So his implication was Andy Burnham was absolutely screwed because he doesn't have a working majority.

36:21Rory Stewart:It doesn't matter what the figures look like. He's never going to be able to get anything done. Has something changed? And if so, how? one.

36:32You almost pulled one of your faces there, which I will promise our listeners of yours, we will talk about it. Essentially, if I may plug my splendid book, Percivalience, coming out soon, I actually write about Blair, Starmer, Burnham in the context of who's got Percivalience as opposed to resilience and i make the point that keir starmer in large part became prime minister with such a majority by not being the tories okay andy burnham has become prime minister in the way that he did in to some extent by not being keir starmer so you are right that the labor party as it were turned but i think the labor party turned because for two reasons mps didn't feel their views were valued and respected.

37:22They did think there was a kind of number 10 operation that held them rather in contempt. But the most important thing was that Labour MPs were going out into the country and getting the dislike of the government, the new government, from the public, from their electorate, and starting to think, I'm in trouble here. And the reason why I think it was, and I said this night, this event I was doing last night, somebody was asking, you know, what should we know about Andy Burnham that we don't know? And I honestly didn't mean this as a criticism of Andy Burnham at all. I said, what you need to know about Andy Burnham, he's really ruthless.

37:59He has become private as to inheriting somebody else's majority. When he listed the great election wins of the Labour through history, he didn't even mention 2024, 1945 to 1997, seven then it stops in other words the next one is the one that he's thinking about so he he that and that was an extraordinary thing but that was him and look i think i've told you in the back of a car once that i went i did have a conversation with him in manchester a while back quite early on in kia starmer's leadership he was basically this this isn't going to work it's not going to work they don't do they don't do politics properly so he he's basically he is basically going to take the MPs seriously.

38:41And that means they're more likely to stay on site.

38:44Rory Stewart:I was really struck when we interviewed him on leading the first time. The way that you two were talking in the margins of that and just how bleak his vision of what was going on was. On the ruthlessness thing, I mean, I think I'm right in saying that he basically turned up at last party conference as a fringe speaker, basically leading a kind of rebellion against Keir Starmer with all Keir Starmer's loyalists saying, who the hell is this guy? So this idea that he's a sort of people pleaser who doesn't like making anyone unhappy, that takes a hell of a lot of balls to turn up at your party conference against the wishes of the national executive and run fringe meetings, basically plotting how to topple the sitting prime minister.

39:31No, I mean, if you think about it, the main narrative around the conference last year, or one of them, was Andy Burnham's on the prowl. And the main outcome was Keir Starmer has seen off Andy Burnham for good. A year later, he goes through the by-election where he was blocked. He then goes through, re-engineers another by-election, which he wins, and wins it in such a way that even Keir Starmer is sort of saying, well, it's obvious now I've got to go and he comes in. And people then saying he won because he's a nicer guy. It's an incredible feat.

40:05Rory Stewart:No, it's very weird, isn't it? It's very weird. And actually, yeah, very weird. And a lot of the he's all about the vibes and he's not serious wasn't initially produced by the Tories. It was produced by Starmer loyalists trying to write him off a year and a half ago. And you sometimes got a bit of this from Starmer. He gets sort of impatient that Burnham didn't understand some aspect of fiscal policy or have got his numbers wrong or, you know, nobody can be prime minister if they, you know, say whatever he said about WASPy women. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, no, I think he's, yeah, there's something going on there.

40:46Rory Stewart:Okay, let's lean into the Labour Party, though, for a second. So, my big idea that I had today, I was just up in Dumbarton and Loch Lomond. Okay. And I was with a conference in one of these big conferences that you go to. And a friend of mine who I admire very much, he's an economist, was saying, all the politicians in Britain know how to create growth. They're just too afraid to do it. They quoted, I think, Jean-Paul Juncker, who said, we all know what to do. We just don't know how to get reelected once you've done it. And I said, and I want to try this idea on you, that that's wrong. wrong, that the reason why the politicians are not doing what the economists want them to do is that they are prioritizing other things over growth.

41:31Rory Stewart:Let's take a couple of examples. So, you know, why did the Tories not push through radical planning reform? Well, because actually, as conservatives representing rural constituencies, they actually were really on the side of the NIMBYs. It wasn't that they were afraid of them, they agreed with them. They want to keep their green unpleasant land. Why does Labour stop big cuts to welfare or changes to the winter fuel allowance? Well, because broadly speaking, they're on the side of the people getting winter fuel welfare payments, and they're putting that ahead of growth. And you can keep developing this.

42:03Rory Stewart:Why is it that Ed Miliband stood behind his energy policy? Well, because he believed in what he thought he was doing to combat climate change and be an ambassador for the world on climate change. So this idea that there is a sort of range of options, which a lot of the economists are peddling, which is cut the energy costs, build, drill, deregulate, liberate the capital markets, and we all know what to do. it's just the politicians too cowardly to do it, isn't catching the actual reality of the values. And I think in many ways, the values of our politicians are not actually about growth. Let's take another example.

42:47Rory Stewart:Let's say that we actually needed some immigration for our economy. Well, Nigel Farage is going to put curbing immigration above growth, right? So let's center in on the Labour Party. This is, I think, the bit that I find easiest to believe that he's going to get through is social housing and more control over water. I don't think he's ever going to have the money to buy back the water industry. I find it much more difficult to believe he's going to be able to deliver growth in every postcode if growth means cutting welfare spending, cutting taxes, deregulating, because I just don't think his party's up for all that stuff.

43:25Well, we shall see because I spent quite a lot of time up here with alan milburn um i did an event with him yesterday which is about young people and mental health but i also was talking about a new campaign on getting involved in about young people and their well-being and he of course he was really funny being with it because uh and i've got to tell you roy that the whole selfie thing is out of control of these press at these conferences now it is absolutely out of control we're wandering around and and alan alan was being seen like this sort of you know oh it's alan milburn he's doing the neat review and the neat review was becoming like and it was like go on alan you could do it you've got to do it have you but what's interesting about the way that and this event i did with alan was kind of was an audience was public it wasn't as if he was just you know talking to me and he's going to be coming up with some big stuff he's going to be coming up with some big you know really big change which fits i think with a lot of the stuff that um pat mcfadden's been talking about on welfare and that Andy's been talking about on welfare.

44:27And I think with that, you see, the other thing that's interesting about this, where we are in the parliamentary timetables, we've had these two years. We're actually, you know, he mentioned Shabana Mahmood getting the small boats numbers down and getting, you know, the migration numbers more under control. They have done a lot in the first two years. But Andy Burnham is basically saying, right, we've got a new government now, but it's got a very short life. Now, what that means for the MPs, you know this, as you get closer to an election, you've got to be very, very careful about the choices that you make.

44:58Some of the choices, and including the weakening of your own government at a time when it could be very, very crucial. And I wouldn't underestimate, you mentioned talking to a whip. Some of the whips I talked to under Keir Starmer said it was just, they felt they didn't have enough material to keep the MPs on board, not enough arguments. And I think what Andy's doing he's showing he's taking them serious as a one mp i saw said that i've seen andy burnham more in the 10 weeks he's been prime minister than i saw kia star madrid in two years

45:32Rory Stewart:um so he's doing politics he's doing politics let's um take the idea that and uh alan melbourne's going to come in with some radical stuff and that phantom is going to come to radical stuff what that means for listeners or at least what i think the newspapers think that means for listeners is that they're going to make significant cuts to welfare and that they're going to try to restore the public finances by changing a system which appears to have contributed to a million people being out of work who shouldn't be out of work. But that will mean that if you're a Labour MP in a constituency where a lot of people are out of work and a lot of the traditional Labour heartland are places where there are far more people on these benefits than would be true in a traditional prosperous Tory suburb.

46:23Rory Stewart:They will have a lot of people coming into their constituency surgeries. And of course, any cuts are either slightly too generous, or they're slightly too mean. And these will be slightly too mean. And there will be lots of people saying, this is completely ridiculous. How the hell am I supposed to live on this? How could I have this cut yeah but rory how how how can it be that we now have one million young people not in education employment or training that that is a failure of and this is where systemic failure has to come into it a million young people and and and the i'd say that the arguments that alan milburn i felt was starting to make was that we we've got we can either just sort of carry on paying the benefits and if you're on benefits say at age 18 the chances of you being still still being on benefits at 30 are so much higher than if you actually get going to bed the benefit system later now i i think so i think what he's saying is you know we there's and andy was starting to talk about this i thought one of the most interesting things he did a big thing about older people and then he just had a line which i don't think he was expecting to be a clap line and he basically said you know but we've also got to put right at the heart of our policies young people and their and their future and and i think this sort of idea of investing in young people um so it is going to be welfare to work it has to be welfare to work and again to go back to his mantris to experience that is where and you were sort of you know the way he talks the business and talks about business a lot of the business people felt i spoke to felt they weren't getting enough out of this conference but it was very much you know i think his message is going to be that they are going to be a big part of this as well so look the milburn stuff is going to be very very interesting and i think we should i think you and i know you were impressed when we had him on the podcast first time around we should get him back because i think his report is going to be seminal for this government let's let's get him back and because i think that'll be one of the big things that people will be looking at and then the second thing is going to be this question around business whereas you say the business isn't yet fully won over um that they're not they they don't feel the love quite yet i'm sorry but i have to i have to raise something else because well virtually everywhere i went two things are happening yeah most people under 30 saying can i have a selfie because it seems to be obligatory now yeah that if you're a national treasure like like what i am you know you have to like what you are yeah which must be slightly annoying for the labor ministers and mps if you were getting more selfies than they were Yeah, but I tried to do it in a low-profile Soto-Voctin kind of way.

49:03But the other thing that was happening, Rory, is everybody, everybody was saying to me, what on earth was Rory doing with the swivel and the stare on Newsnight?

49:14Rory Stewart:Now, did you see it? Did you actually see it on Newsnight? I didn't see it live, no. No, but you saw the clip, right? Sorry, Rory, let me just tell you something. I was doing an event 24 hours later with 2 ,000 for the wonderful 93 % Club, which is for the state school network against you 7 % Posh Boys. And there were 2 ,000 teenagers, right? Somebody asked me about what on earth was going on with drawing news that night. And I said, well, before I answer that, who's actually aware of that? Hands up who's aware of what that question is about. 2 ,000 hands went up. Everybody saw it. No, it's absolutely unbelievable.

49:51Rory Stewart:And one single post on it got 22 million views. was that jk rowling uh no that wasn't even jk rowling there was someone else on a meme i mean rowling got a lot but that was another meme and then my godson decided to just put up on social media him doing it without even referring to me and got 850 000 views immediately i mean it's it's really extraordinary and um but presumably you've seen me do that head gesture before or something like it i mean did it not as dramatic not as not as dramatic as that i was on stage today at this conference and i noticed actually when i was on stage of conference i do actually do that all the time i'm like no okay somebody else but no no you don't do it like that the thing you do more and i and i and i go and what do i do more you know i grimace i do a lot of grimacing anything going on you go yeah i grimace but this was like anyway they made me they made me um mimic it that made me sort of trudge it but i found it very hard because i felt you you had to go like that before you go like that but you just go like that but what were you doing well i also think a little bit like ed milliband i'm kind of a bit weird i mean i think my body language and the way that i move is a bit weird i mean remember poor milliband got in terrible trouble was he eating a banana or was that yeah he was eating a banana wasn't he no bacon sandwich bacon sandwich bacon sandwich um i i i think i just my my physical energy and the way that i move is a bit i mean you pointed out the grimacing and yeah and this i think is part of the same thing i but you lent it you lent into that poor woman you were like you were sort of almost in her space as she was trying to contribute to the debate let me because she very very sweetly wrote to me immediately afterwards and I don't know her at all.

51:43Rory Stewart:And this is what she said, which I thought was really kind. Rory High just wanted to say solidarity on becoming the main characters of the internet today. I hope it hasn't bothered you, but I just wanted to reassure you in case it has that I didn't mind and knew you were just being polite and attentive. Take care and all the best. Oh, that's very nice. That's very nice. She's from the New Statesman. Yeah, certainly in the studio, nobody thought i'd done anything weird it's only when it appeared on television that it suddenly looked unbelievably weird yeah well it was it was i i had people all over the world sending it to me completely sorry i mean if you think about and new zealand that they've released you know there was a it went totally viral in new zealand every clip of the new zealand parliament had me going like this through every single clip of the new zealand parliament i know it's it's it's amazing because we put all this energy into doing some of the greatest rest of politics shows and you know we might get three four million if we're really lucky like literally i think there must be put them all together 300 400 million views of me doing this and it's become like a permanent meme and a meme also that like all memes people sort of get but they can't completely explain yeah i think i think you're you i think you pretend to be very naive but i think you're a genius and you this is a totally deliberate thing you thought because my friend my friend dan who's one of the swimmers in the morning he actually said to me says listen mate you go up your game we're always getting all the attention these days well it's also true that it's also true that it was rather ironic because he said why the hell are you going on news tonight nobody knows there's anything that happens on news night and then sure enough there you go well anyway andy burnham will get almost as much attention as you uh in the next couple of days as people digest what i think is a very, very consequential speech.

53:35I really do.

53:36Rory Stewart:Well, really interesting, really exciting. And just to wrap up, I think you gave us a sense of what it was like in the room. You've given us a sense of some of the questions about how the Labour Party responds. You've set out whether there are going to be big cuts to welfare. We talked a bit about housing. We talked about adult social care. We talked about this amazing story around the European Union. But above all, I guess the story that you're communicating is at the moment, it feels as though there is a sense of leadership, a sense of vision, a sense of appeal still to the Labour heart, which means that in the short term, it doesn't feel as though the honeymoon's over.

54:11Rory Stewart:He may only have added a few points to Labour in the polls, but if that allows him to have a working majority and get stuff done, business may cheer up even without the deregulation tax cuts if they think this is the government that's here to stay and that they can trust them to be pretty steady. In other words, he may be able to deliver that thing that paradoxically was the one insight of Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer, which was stability, which they couldn't deliver because stability relies on charisma. Well, there you go. And we've got question time tomorrow. We're going to talk about USA-China on the back of the Trump-Xi visit.

54:53We're going to talk about these really alarming events in Drumkree in Northern Ireland, Ethiopia, equally alarming, Brazil election on Sunday, Jurgen Klopp and the Bayer tapestry. And as you said, on Monday, we've got a fabulous interview with the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood. And there's also your interview with Mustafa Suleiman is out on Leading Now, and I shall be writing from the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool for this week's newsletter, restispolitics.com forward slash newsletter.

55:25Rory Stewart:And for those of you who are really absolute restless politics super fans, the miniseries on existential risk is out at the moment where you can hear Yuval Noah Harari, you can hear Carlo Rovelli, the great physicist, and many, many more to come. So I'd be fascinated to hear what listeners think of what we're doing there. And you and I getting really enthusiastic about miniseries. We're producing so many. I noticed they put out two of my interviews on a single day to try to get them out of the way. very good my wife is drowning under under trying to keep up with it all okay very good all right well i'll see you soon thanks bye-bye speak soon okay bye