Inside Keir Starmer's plan to remain PM till 2027

0:00Do you keep hearing podcast ads, like this one for example, but always wonder how you actually get involved with them for your own brand or organization? Well, it's easier than you think. We're Acast, and we give you the platform to do it all yourself. Browse thousands of popular podcasts, choose the shows that match your perfect audience, set your budget, and launch. And if you want a hand, our podcast specialists are there to help you launch with confidence. This is podcast advertising without barriers. Get started at acast.com slash advertise.

1:01guys. He's a knobhead. He doesn't know what he's doing. He's no bowls, no brains and a milk bottle. Welcome to The State of It, the political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times. I'm Stephen Swinford, the political editor of The Times. I'm Laura Spirit, the deputy political editor of The Sunday Times. And I am Patrick Maguire, chief commentator for The Times. This week, we are going to talk to you about fear and loathing in number 10. how Starmer feels betrayed by everyone around him and everyone around him feels betrayed in turn by Keir Starmer. We have a scoop from Patrick Maguire on Keir Starmer's plans for government, how he hopes to stay in power until possibly as long as 2027, beyond Christmas is the suggestion.

1:50And then finally, we're going to talk about the most consequential by-election in history. We can't find a parallel for it. The Makerfield by-election, where the 77 ,000 voters there will potentially be selecting the next prime minister. So can Andy Burnham do that? And can the populist force that is Andy Burnham defeat the populist force that is Nigel Farage? We've just had a cabinet where it's been a veritable nest of singing birds. No one is saying a bad word. They're all trying to forget what's just happened. And behind the scenes, it is utterly, utterly toxic. You know, there is an enmity all round.

2:24Keir Starmer hates several people in his cabinet now. They feel very similarly about him. and it's very, very toxic and unhappy in there. So look, Patrick, let's kick off with the cabinet that we've just had where everyone's just saying lovely things and it's a very happy place. Yeah, Keir Starmer is talking about his favourite word this morning, which is delivery. In cabinet, they've just had an extended conversation about how the government can get better at delivering things and that's what the Prime Minister, as we'll discuss in a moment, intends to go on doing. I mean, there was one sign, however, at least one sign of tension.

3:01And that was when Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, spoke. Apparently, Ed Miliband could not even look at him. You know, one person in the room described him almost performatively turning away when Darren spoke. So not all is well among the deliverers of Keir Starmer's government. We'll come to your scoop on it in a moment, Patrick. But let's just start, Laura, by talking about how the prime minister is, how he's feeling. Because everything in the readouts we're getting is he's absolutely livid. He's pretty bloody furious and he feels betrayed. He feels betrayed by cabinet ministers around him.

3:31Yeah, I mean, notably the ones that Patrick just mentioned there for whom the last few weeks. Who's on his hate list? Give us the list. I mean, Siobhan Mahmood, of course, the Home Secretary, is on his hate list. Went to tell him to set out a timeline, but also is now known as having done so. That is seen by some around the prime minister as a grave betrayal. Also, of course, Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, in many ways, you know, something close to a friend for the prime minister insofar as that's possible politically. Ed Miliband is a key reason why Starmer entered frontline politics in the first place and yet has, of course, made it known that he would be willing to challenge Streeting to become prime minister in circumstances where there would be a leadership contest and has been seen as one of the really key players among the soft left behind the scenes in making Andy Burnham a kind of possible, plausible and now perhaps likely candidate.

4:14So I think those two figures are obviously high on that list. Of course, Streeting isn't on that list because he's no longer around the cabinet table. He's, of course, causing problems in a number of ways, but right now wasn't in that room this morning. But I think the Prime Minister's view is that they behaved in an unforgivable way. And what particularly angered him was a succession of leaks to the Times last week about Cabinet ministers going over the top and calling for him to go because it wasn't done in a private way. He felt that that became public and he was infuriated by that. What I would say as a counter to that is that we are now in a position where most of the cabinet share that view.

4:45They would like the prime minister to set out a timeline for his departure. It is over. They think he is done and we are in the end game. But look, Patrick, you've picked up some gear on this that the prime minister doesn't necessarily think it's over. And he thinks he's still got some time at least. So yeah, I got a text from a very concerned minister yesterday saying people are talking about Christmas. And I said, what do you mean by that? Do you mean that the Prime Minister wants to stay until Christmas? They said, yeah, people are talking about the Prime Minister not even using conference to set out the timetable for his departure.

5:23And so we're in May now, the prospect of Keir Starmer still being in number 10 by Christmas. Now, it's clear that in maker field, Andy Burnham is running not just for that seat, he's running for the Labour leadership and the premiership. So the Prime Minister, I'm told, is not going to make a decision on what he says about going or going until we know the results of that election. But then there's another election. If Andy Burnham wins that election, there will be a mayoral by-election in Greater Manchester. Now, people close to Keir Starmer are under the impression or have been given the message by Andy Burnham's people that, no, no, Andy is going to lead the campaign to that and prove that an Andy Burnham campaign is capable not just of winning in Makerfield, but Andy Burnham at the forefront of the campaign for the Greater Manchester Merit, regardless if it's, I don't know, Bev Craig, the leader of Manchester City Council, or Gary Neville, or whoever, can win it with Andy Burnham's backing, right?

6:22So, you know, we've had one election there, one election there. we're into the summer uh then we've got labour party conference but hang on what if Andy Burnham loses that mayor by election what is he still a viable election candidate how has he won in maker field you know is it just on the basis of being Andy Burnham and being against Westminster politics or does he make some policy pledges or u-turns that alienate his natural constituency of backers in parliament and make him a less viable leadership candidate in parliament so if you're the Prime Minister, you look at this and think, well, hang on, I can just keep doing my cabinets on delivery for a bit longer because I don't want to cede my position just because people are kicking and screaming.

7:02And I think that is the thing I think we're all missing here, right? Keir Starmer believes, and it's, you know, partly a personality thing, but it's also a question of what he believes in the national interest and believing that, you know, there's a time to hold him accountable. It's an election and he's not just going to go because people are telling him to go. But that gets you, actually, if you follow that sequence, Andy Burnham's not going to be Prime Minister in time for conference, he thinks, then you're basically into the winter. And that's why some people close to the Prime Minister are saying, you know, it is not inconceivable that Keir Starmer is still Prime Minister in 2027, right, into 2027.

7:38I think if you put that to the medium member of the Parliamentary Labour Party, they would kill you, all themselves. Once you hear that theory set out, and there's still a bit of jeopardy in Andy Burnham's path and what happens after, We're then back into the scenario we found ourselves in last week, which is, you know, actually, if you want to get rid of this guy, you've got to interrupt his cabinet about delivery and challenge him with the 81 names, because otherwise, you know, the Burnham thing is another order of magnitude, but we're back into the situation where it's going to have to be Wes and Ed and Angela all slugging it out for the leadership because the natural succession, i.e.

8:13Burnham, isn't happening. I think one of the issues is going to be that it becomes really hard to do. effective government for two reasons. There's a bandwidth issue because every time you try to do something all people want to talk about is the leadership, where it's going. And there's a very real thing that people wait and decisions get made. So I'll give you a couple of examples. We've got a big thwonking announcement on Thursday on the cost of living. Rachel Rees is going to scrap the 5p increase in fuel duty. Now any normal run of the week that would have been a splash. I was reading through the weekend papers and I think it was the Sun on Sunday and it was a 130 word right hand.

8:51So a very small piece, which was just saying this was the plan is by Kate Ferguson at the Sun on Sunday. And it was bang on. She was a really good scoop. It's a big deal. It costs 2.4 billion pounds. But the question is, are people listening? Because there's this bandwidth issue. And then there's a much broader issue, which is, will anyone take you seriously? So let's take the other big thing on the horizon. Kirsten is trying to get a deal with the EU. over the line, a Brexit reset. If you're in Brussels, you're going to be like, well, I might just hold fire on this because there's another guy coming that's more pro-E.

9:22You're not clear what you're dealing with. And that's one of the issues. The authority has gone. And as a result, it becomes much more difficult for him to get anyone to listen to what he's saying and then actually to get decisions through. Yeah, I mean, totally. On the EU question, the idea that this was the kind of bold heart of his reset that was literally, lest we forget, just over a week ago. I mean, it's crazy to think how much has happened in the space of about eight days. The idea that he was basically saying that a closer relationship would be a big part of this reset wouldn't say how, really, in any firm details.

9:55And now you have not just the kind of would-be challenger in this by-election essentially saying, OK, well, he's not going to talk about it or major on it necessarily. But he is on the record as saying he would like to rejoin at some point in his lifetime. and Wes Streeting, of course, the former health secretary, literally saying this weekend that he wants to rejoin if Starmer wants any part of his kind of big, bold reset to be closer relationships with the European Union in circumstances where it now looks like a very pale imitation of what his two main challenges are doing. I think that's quite difficult for him.

10:23Look, we will come to the 4D chess of Wes Streeting attempting to blow up Andy Burnham's election campaign by making Brexit an issue shortly. But Patrick, one thing I wanted to just touch on as well is how toxic it is in there and how West Streeting's resignation letter was extraordinary by any standards of a resignation letter. It had this incredible line. You basically presided over vacuum and drift and that people who are loyal to them, you just dispense of them. The problem is that a lot of people in that cabinet room agree with that, Patrick. And I think you picked up some noises from cabinet loyalists to the PM.

10:56So we won't obviously ever disclose sources, but not your usual suspects. And they feel really badly treated. No, exactly. And I think there was the line in Wes Streeting's resignation letter, you're absolutely right, Steve, which gets that basically anyone who comes into contact with Keir Starmer, even those who like him, come to believe what Wes Streeting said. Leaders take responsibility, but too often that has meant other people falling on their swords. And, you know, when Gabriel and I wrote our book about Keir Starmer, we chose as the epigraph something Jeremy Thorpe said after the Night of the Long Knives, Harold Macmillan's brutal cabinet reshuffle.

11:35And he inverted the famous line from the Bible. He said, you know, greater love hath no man than this. He lay down his friends for his life rather than life for his friends. And I think that is Keir Starmer to a T. And as you say, even loyal cabinet ministers, right, people who are in the trenches with Keir Starmer every day were getting in touch with me last night, you know, last week, getting an unexpected text out of the blue from someone saying, basically, you know, when we come back and reflect on this, you know, the prime minister was surrounded by people, several members of the cabinet, who were busting a gut for him.

12:11They showed him loyalty and too often there's no loyalty in return from the Prime Minister, who is, you know, apart from acting in the national interest, right? You know, there were really fascinating lines in a piece Tom Baldwin, his biographer, wrote for The Observer at the weekend. It was the description of his rage, right? His sort of self-righteous rage, which I think is being picked up by those sort of cabinet loyalists who are basically saying, you know, surely, surely there is more to what we're doing, right? than keeping you Prime Minister. And I think the delivery cabinet this morning is almost a way of reminding them that it's about more than Keir Starmer.

12:49It's about doing sort of big progressive reform. But when even cabinet loyalists are despairing of the Prime Minister's treatment of them, they're the only people he has left. And they're a really dwindling band, right? So if he does want to stay until early 2027 or thinks he can, he better start building bridges with those people. But those relationships have probably broken beyond repair. Yeah, so look, the challenge for Starmer is that if Andy Burnham wins Makerfield, then cabinet ministers say it's over. It should be over there and then. There should be a coronation. He should be carried aloft on the shoulders of Labour MPs to Parliament because he will have proven that he can beat Nigel Farage.

13:32And that is a very rare commodity in Labour politics and in any politics at this stage of the game. So we're going to head to the interval now. But when we come back, we are going to be talking about that by-election, the most consequential by-election in history. And actually, it's really tough for Andy Burnham to win this and talk about some of the obstacles in his way and how he tends to get around them. While every other channel is fighting for your customers' attention, podcasts are where they've already given it. No one accidentally listens to a podcast for 45 minutes. They choose to be here.

14:05They trust the voice in their ears. And when that voice talks about your brand, it doesn't sound like advertising. It sounds like a recommendation from a friend. Acast gives you that trust at scale. Digital precision, post-read authenticity, and performance data that proves it worked. Don't fight for attention. Buy it with Acast. Learn more by visiting acast.com slash advertise.

14:31Welcome back to The State of It, the political podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times. We want to talk about the Makerfield by-election, where Andy Burnham is attempting to take on and beat Nigel Fras and Reform UK. And look, this is about as consequential as it gets. There are 75 ,000 voters in Makerfield. They will determine potentially who the next Prime Minister is. And Andy Burnham, I'll put it to you, has got a mountain to climb. This is a really tough seat. Reform swept the board at the local elections. It won over 50 % of the vote. And Andy Burnham is basically relying on his brand.

15:11He's relying on his popularity in an attempt to win this. I think Patrick memorably described him as the Kim Jong-un of Greater Manchester politics. That's right, Patrick. Because what you've got is two populist forces. You've got Reform that swept the board. and then you've got Andy Burnham who has previously swept the ball. But can you just talk to us about what Burnham is like up there as an electoral force, Patrick, briefly? He is the most formidable electoral politician in this country, with the exception of Nigel Farage, and they're both capable of winning the same places. And why I think that is, actually, is they both have the same secret sauce.

15:44They are both articulating a very powerful criticism of politics itself, and that is the heart of Farage's appeal and it is the heart of latter-day Burnham's appeal. Personally, as someone who's not from a million miles away from Makerfield and Wigan, from Southport, which is just over the road, really, I think Andy Burnham will win this seat. It might be tight, right? It probably will be tight. I suspect Andy Burnham does win this by-election. even though it's difficult reform would want to move back to a sort of anti-politics which makes this such a fascinating contest with Burnham because Burnham is basically sort of doing a sort of left Farage-ism on this sort of stuff it's like politics itself is broken I'm going to reshape politics in the same way that Farage is doing but if you were to give me a tenner Steve and say go to Willie Hill I would with sort of low confidence put it on Burnham And, you know, it's such a unique, sui generis contest.

16:43It's Andy Burnham on the ballot, not the Labour Party on the ballot. And if reform can remind people it is the Labour Party, Andy Burnham's margin will be lower. But as you say, it's almost a coin flip at this stage. But, you know, personally, look, Andy Burnham fights election in Greater Manchester. You are an idiot, I think, if you don't have him as the favourite, even in our favourite. So, look, we should talk about how he's planning to fight this, Lara. I mean, he's making it all about him. This is Bran Burnham front and centre with incredibly slick video that was released last night and these strange cartoon images of his head with Andy for us underneath.

17:17Yeah, I mean, the video was interesting because obviously it was centred around his personal enigmatic appeal. What does it show for listeners that haven't seen it? So for listeners to show, it shows him walking around Manchester being feted by everyone that he passes who subsequently says to the camera some variation of the country would be in a brilliant place if we had Andy Burnham as our leader or in place, etc. I mean, it's pitching both to the constituency that he is running in, but it is also fundamentally a campaign video that takes, I think, account of the really peculiar and unique national situation.

17:45In other words, it has at its centre a kind of national diagnosis. You know, there's talk of Thatcherism, there's talk of hollowing out of these communities. And so there is a real sense of kind of, you know, this is definitely going to be my post-makerfield pitch as well as my make-a-field pitch. And there's an awareness of that from him. So I think you're right to say that he will place himself front and centre of the campaign. He will have to run something of a reactive campaign, depending on how reform play this. And speaking to reform sources last week, obviously, they do want to make Brexit a big part of this.

18:13But they're also planning on trying to paint Burnham as a posh boy, which I think, you know, when I've spoken to people in the Burnham camp, they say it's absolutely outrageous if you look at his background. But they are saying, you know, senior reform sources, we're going to show him as someone who grew up in Cheshire, went to Cambridge, formed a career in Westminster. I agree with Patrick. I do think if you're going to put money on it, you would put money on Burnham winning in this contest, particularly, you know, speaking to Luke Trill, the director of More Uncommon last week, UK director, saying I think Burnham overperformed in 2024 by about 20 points in this area compared to the national.

18:45So I mean, clearly there is a massive personal appeal here, but the demographics are classically reformed. And you're talking about a constituency that is more than 96 % white, far fewer graduates than in your typical constituency and heavily leave voting. I mean, this is and somewhere which was one of reform's, you know, best second places in the election. So it's not going to be an easy contest. And it is one of the reasons I think why those on the soft left who adore Andy Burnham so much, one of them getting genuinely emotional on the phone to me last week when this was the constituency that was revealed to be the one that he would be contesting, saying, effectively this is such an enormous gamble.

19:17It is such an incredible display of courage that he is going for a seat that is not immediately and obviously winnable that if he does this it will just essentially be as that cabinet minister put it to you. I mean I think just a really easy pitch for him then to go into number 10 relatively immediately afterwards. Patrick one of the things that strikes me is that when you look at what reform has done so far in terms of how they're taking on Burnham it's all a little bit incoherent. So we had at the beginning of the week, they were going to make it all about Brexit. They were going to point out that Andy Burnham had argued for a second referendum.

19:49And then they put out a load of attack ads, which were all about effectively Andy Burnham, the shapeshifter, a guy who wanted to stand in lots of different seats and doesn't care about the people of Makerfield. And I'm not clear that that will work, because that is probably different to the Andy Burnham that people know in Manchester that has been a defining political force there for some time. And I think they're going to need to work out what their actual pitch is sooner than later on this, Patrick. I don't know what you think, but it does feel a little bit all over the place at the moment. Well, yes and no.

20:20I think they've settled on a message. I mean, let me read you some text from speaking to someone who has been on the doors for Labour, right, for Labour in Makerfield. They said it's basically about 50-50 or statistically meaningless to predict. What I'm worried about, though, is I think so far reformer framing their argument on the ground better. And they said, you know, the message reform, and this is from Labour, right? This is, you know, vote reform and end Labour's national circus and elect a local reform champion, right? Reject open borders and back control. Reject, rejoin and respect Brexit, right?

21:00Andy's in it for Andy. He's not for Makerfield. He'll get in, go down and we'll never see him again. That's the sort of reform message that Labour are worried about. and yet you know sort of Westminster bubble uh Twitter adverts you know people may look at them and say you know what the hell is that do people really believe it when Andy Burnham's on telly with a butter pie um you know saying oh here's my old PE teacher I'm one of the lads uh lived two miles down the road uh there's where my kids go to school etc etc I mean all of that aside it is not impossible for reform to find the right kind of message you can see that's where reform are trying ahead anyway with the sort of, you know, Andy Burnham is in it for himself in those adverts, right?

21:41Here's the random seat generator. He doesn't really care about this place. So if they're going for that, then I think that is tricky for Andy Burnham, right? Because it is casting him as the one thing he's insistent he's not, which is a politician, right? Who is the more convincing anti-politics messenger in this? I mean, that is the test here. So we've also had, you're talking about Andy Burnham, the politician, he's been doing some remarkably politician-like things in recent days. So we've had two big shifts in his approach. Some people call them U-turns. One is explicitly so, the other less so.

22:13But the first was he is now saying explicitly, I will abide by Rachel Reeves' fiscal rules because the cost of government borrowing kept spiking. It was going to be used against him. So he's now there. That is done. He will not borrow extra for defence, as he's previously said. And that is a big shift from what he said before and that has huge consequences for his premiership if he wins this which we'll talk about in a moment and the second is on Brexit in the space he went from an interview on Saturday in which he was saying there was a long-term case for Britain rejoining the EU and then that is gone the Great North Summit speech yesterday he was saying uh no I'm not we will not be rejoining the EU under me so that is he's trying to take off the table two big issues in doing so there is a risk that that severely constrains what he could do if he wins this election.

23:01Yeah, I mean, I think that Europe's stuff with Andy Burnham is very interesting, speaking to Labour sources about this, because he has had a real evolution on the question of Europe from someone who obviously campaigned, to be fair to him, very energetically for the Remain campaign during the referendum, and then was extremely sour on the prospect of, I mean, well, post-election on what happened, you know, when a number of people in Labour were clamouring, under Corbyn and outside of Corbyn for either a much, much closer relationship with the European Union or for something like a kind of second referendum.

23:33He was very careful about that. He did sort of come around to the prospect of that when there was the threat of no deal. There was a suggestion that he may even vote for Brexit if it did come to that. And then he sort of went quiet on the issue for quite a long time to emerge at Labour conference, of course, last year to say this remark. Now, I think, you know, it was quite a casual remark that was said in this interview. And it is quite hard to know exactly how calculated that was as an intervention. But it was, of course, perfectly pitched to the Labour membership, who we know are extremely pro-European.

24:01I think that speaks to West Streeting's intervention at the weekend as well on this question. And so I think in many ways, I do think it's quite unsurprising that we saw this clarification from Burnham, not just because of the seats demographics, but also because of the fact that he is going to have to come in if he does take over to a pretty divided party. And there has already been a really strong reaction, not just from reforming the Conservative Party to these questions and to our Streetings intervention, but also inside the Labour Party. I mean, my phone on Saturday when we were writing the front page of the Sunday Times was literally a light with people in the Labour Party, in this government, saying this is a disaster.

24:34This intervention is going to be really, really difficult for us. We're just getting our heads around how we can pitch a closer relationship with the European Union. And this throws all of it out of the water. It's totally ideological and it's really badly thought through. And that was specifically on Streeting's intervention. But it does apply to the prospect of Andy Burnham if he did win this election saying, OK, I want to go firmly down a rejoined path. Now, I think the significance of this is that it does end a very long running a murder in the Labour Party on the question of Brexit generally.

24:59And they are going to now have to have this conversation, this reckoning about a topic that has been really uncomfortable for many of them for a very long time. And Makerfield, in a way, is a kind of perfect test case for how you navigate these arguments. And so I think people were watching Andy Burnham very closely on that question. And then on the fiscal rules, again, I think, I mean, in many ways, that is a more significant intervention from Burnham because it wasn't very long ago that Lou Haig, one of his very close allies, you know, published that paper, which was essentially 10 days ago, re-looking at that question.

25:27And this, for many people on the soft left, is a doctrine that they hold to be extremely dear, that the fiscal rules have been something very, very damaging and constraining for the Labour Party. and that to truly govern well, you need to find a way of amending them and changing them. And that's something they believe massively passionately. So I think that is going to be something that will have bristled people perhaps ever so slightly more. But at the moment, a lot of them are just united around the fact that they really desperately want Andy Burnham to win this by-election and will be hoping that he can do so.

25:55Now, is he going to end up in a position that we saw with obviously Keir Starmer and also with Rachel Reeves, where these things then become extremely difficult and kind of constraining factors if you do then end up in office? I think, you know, at the moment, for the reasons we've just spoken about, this by-election is a really difficult thing for Burnham to win. And he'll be prioritising winning that above everything else. Patrick, we should just talk to that briefly, because in this speech that Burnham did at the Great North Summit in Leeds yesterday, there were kind of three big things he talked about, really quite chunky things.

26:24One, nationalisation, implying, but not stating explicitly the nationalisation of things like water, energy, other things. two he talked about re-industrialisation didn't define what that means but that presumably means spending quite a lot of money in local areas and three he talked about maximum devolution again didn't spell out what that means but a fair bet is that that means kind of tax raising powers going much more locally i think one of the challenges is what does he actually mean by these things patrick yeah look and as you say it's incohate it's pretty vague there is work being done to put me on the bones of this.

27:00And a lot of this, by the way, is spooking the markets, spooking the city when you hear people talking about undone that tourism, when you hear people talking about nationalisation. And the tricky thing for Burnham, right, is finding a message that is capable of maintaining his reputation within the Labour Party, but also reassuring the markets. Because there is a story Andy Burnham could tell about Manchester. He could basically say, I'm going to do to the entire country what Howard Bernstein and Graham Stringer and Richard Lees did when they were running Manchester City Council, right? We'll have a great productive relationship with business and then we'll do what I've been doing as Greater Manchester Metro Mayor, which is, you know, reinvesting the proceeds of growth in a strong strategic state and public services.

27:51But he's not really communicating that, right? Because, you know it's a it's a Labour members and PLP facing uh sort of anti-politics message right now about the whole thing being broken when actually I don't doubt Andy Burnham's critique of uh regional inequality etc etc is sincere but you know he has made the market economy working in Greater Manchester uh and you know very soon if he does win in Makerfield the audience that is going to matter in terms of his ability to do anything as Prime Minister uh and you know we can shout about the democratic illegitimacy until the cows come home. But ultimately, you know, successive governments have left us exposed to the people we borrow money from, and Andy Burnham is going to need to reassure them that he can be trusted with it.

28:34And I don't think he's a million miles away from that as someone who was Chief Secretary to the Treasury in a Blair government, and is ultimately running Manchester. You know, it is not socialism in one city, it is something much more textured, and, you know, less obviously left wing than that in terms of its underlying model and it may be and this is a big question is he just going to do what keir starmer's been doing which is run a sort of continental social democratic government but you know with a bit more charisma and by leaning into the left leftish elements of its platform right because this is a pretty left-wing government all things considered will andy burnham just do a bit of left populist messaging and people will suddenly say wow you know this government's doing loads of progressive things i've got a text from someone just before we started recording saying you know if Keir Starmer's offer to the Labour membership in 2020 was Jeremy Corbyn in a suit is Andy Burnham just going up as Keir Starmer in a pair of short running shorts but with a different presentation and maybe that's you know one of the least worst things the Labour Party could do right now.

29:34Well I think that brings us to the end of this episode of the State Fit. Laura can you do the massive red button? Thank you to Molly Guinness to Harry Kitson and to Ewan Daughtry.

30:14the world's largest podcast marketplace. Choose the right shows, the right audiences, the right format. Then watch the data tell you it worked. You're not buying impressions. You're buying influence. Learn more by visiting acast.com slash advertise.