Burnham’s flying start... but is he also fibbing?

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1:04To contrast it with Starmer's lack of energy and preparedness when he came out of the traps, it's night and day. I think what was significant yesterday was, and he, you know, it was a very striking moment. He called out the Mail and the Telegraph, he named them, and he said, you know, every time you run a front page that says dementia tax, death tax, You are frightening people. The first six months, the first hundred days, these are the moments that define everything. Hello and happy hot Thursday. Happy hot Thursday, one and all. Bloody hell. Scotch-yo. Is it ever going to end? Serious question, which we shall tackle in another podcast.

1:50Yeah, I know. I think we need to talk about that, really. We do. Well, maybe we'll do that next week because it's going to continue. you speaking of hot streaks yes yes mr burnham's off to a hot start isn't he yes let's talk about our exciting new prime minister as the late auburn war would have said um which i always laughed at um it's i don't know you i i mean i'm amazed it's only 10 days since he's been prime minister well it feels like a whole different climate doesn't it it does and and and he's been I mean, I think the pace of the last 10 days has been a message, you know, has had a quality and content to it, as well as the specific things he said.

2:34And in a sense, he's I think he's both starting from scratch and obviously introducing himself to people who don't necessarily know him because they weren't around in 2010 or before or don't know him through Greater Manchester, but also because he's assuming that he's starting from scratch with this government. Yeah. So the sheer, the frenzy of announcements and appearances and, you know, quite small retail measures, but not nothing is amazing. Yeah, I agree. And I think, you know, to contrast it with, again, you know, not to look too far backwards, but to contrast it with Starmer's lack of energy and preparedness when he came out of the traps, it's night and day.

3:21And I also think that, yes, some of these measures are small and relatively inconsequential. But if you're mapping out strategically, what are the kind of things that people are going to say? OK, I get where this is going. I see what you're about. I think all of these measures are massive ticks. So last week we had kind of, you know, quite small things like the bus fare cap, a bit of money off your energy bill, some rates or business rates relief for hospitality venues then he's sort of segueing into you know meet Zelensky yeah promises solidarity with Ukraine it's important then there was some education reform yesterday and I guess we should go on and talk about this in a bit but you know I think a very substantial moment on social care yeah he's doing something on defence today uh and then tomorrow we're promised a you know a big speech on his favourite subject devolution you know which will include apparently some fiscal measures on um local authorities and sorry on mayors getting a share of income tax back which is interesting um but you know all of that I do think you're right I mean I think that you can see that he's both saying I'm building up a strategic picture on big things but I also understand that you want some immediate yeah pain pain relief on on the things that have been causing you such personal hardship which i think is exactly right and it and it's kind of it's all directional you know it all i know these are very varied areas that he's dipping into and there's and there's a lot of you know well where's the money coming from um and that's fine but to be honest with you i i kind of prefer an approach which is based on um let's not worry about the money completely right now let's express intent on areas that are are absolutely crying out for solutions and people are desperate i mean social care we which we should talk about yes at a bit more length is at an absolute crisis point it is and it's been it's been what's weird about it to me is if it was an epidemic of you know a named disease like cancer or so people would it would be front page all the time people would be on it all the time there would be people would be solutionizing long before now but because it's kind of crept up with this aging demographic and suddenly everybody's got a family member who you know if you're lucky enough is is suffering from some form of dementia or they need long care it's kind of become this epidemic that hasn't really been uh the target of the scrutiny it deserves and now he's bringing that scrutiny to it i quite agree and i mean by the way you know it is an epidemic of a disease it's just the disease is dementia rather than cancer so that's right well to that point matt let's just have a little diversion on that for a second because i think this is what struck me this morning listening to all the the chat on radio 4 about this is it is a disease it is it is um an epidemic as you say why is this seen as something separate to something the national health service would normally deal with i i've no idea i mean you know i'm delighted that that um the nhs is as good as it is on acute care particularly for things like cancer and that we're devoting so much money to oncology excellent um but you know the fact is the two main forms of dementia alzheimer's is related to protein problems vascular dementia is the consequence of stroke typically these are physical conditions so there is absolutely no um intellectual reason why they should be different but but the the problem i suppose is that it things being what they are in in in the world things get siloed off and the truth is that although it takes five seconds thought to realize that dementia is a physical medical clinical condition like any other for some reason it's sort of just associated with the whole business of what do we do with old people yes well first of all um actually look at the the rising rates of early onset partly because people are being diagnosed more better than they were before yeah so it isn't actually all just old people but even if it was you know we don't um say well that's only young babies when we're talking about pediatric care you know uh you know i've got a cousin who was one of the leading geriatric consultants in um in the country he's retired now but he he was um absolutely the top man in the country more or less for the treatment of geriatric conditions and he i remember him saying to me that you know people talk exactly what you've just said people talk about all of these things as oh that's old age and they put it into a bucket He said it's not, it's a collection of identifiable medical conditions that you treat.

8:23It's not just getting old, you know. No, not at all. And he very much saw all of those things as within the remit of the National Health Service. So it still strikes me as a real paradox that we mentally separate out these conditions once someone tips into a certain age group. I think we are heading towards an answer to exactly the question you rightly posed. But just before we do, just one more point about today, which I think is worth making and underlining, is that it's the Greater Manchester mayoralty by-election today. And I do feel that all those people who it now looks, I mean, unless the polls are wildly out, as if Labour's Bev Craig is going to hold on to it and see off reforms Sean Astley and Greens' Geraldine Coggins, which is, you know, terrific news.

9:19But also all those people, including, frankly, Keir Starmer, who said, well, you know, Burnham shouldn't stand in a by-election because it would imperil our chances in Greater Manchester. Well, it looks like that's going to be fine. Now, was it a gamble? Yes. But I'll be interested to see how many of the people who said, oh, we can't do that. It'll be the most expensive by-election in Labour history. That's right. Well, was it really because they thought they would lose Greater Manchester or was it actually because they just wanted to keep Burnham out of number 10? Well, I think we know we know the answers to that answers on a postcard.

9:56Yeah. But it just, you know, sorry to sort of exhume the corpse of the regime again. But, you know, we keep hearing what a decent man he was and how wonderful he was and how well-intentioned he was and all this rubbish. Well, you know, he could have been an MP in the Gorton by-election. Right. But Starmer kept him out for this reason. And today we're going to discover that that was basically on a false pretext. That's right. It's a it's a it's a really good example of local politics, party political politics getting in the way of the national interest. 100 percent. 100 percent. And by the way, I think I will veer onto this maybe in the second half, but I think Andy Burnham may be in danger of doing a little bit of that himself in regards as to the timing of the next general election.

10:48But anyway, we'll come on to that. So I agree 100 % with everything you said about the social care thing. And I think you raise the key point, which is why do we treat it differently from the NHS? And I think yesterday, if you parse what Burnham and Louise Casey, who is doing the review into social care, and that review has very interestingly been brought forward a year, which I think may feed into our discussion about the election. yeah um but he said things which were very intriguing about this so there were several sort of standout remarks he was at a jewish elderly people's home in in north london um and he said i think social care in england is as unfair as american health care well that's a big statement that's amazing yeah um and then he says the vulnerable pay with everything and it can completely leave them with nothing you know absolutely now to your point it's an absolute bin fire social care two million people have no care at all or insufficient it account i didn't know this it accounts already for 78 percent of local council spending amazing that's crazy when you think about it um and the worst bit of it is is that people say oh it'll cost a lot well it already costs a lot but it costs a lot at the worst possible moment in people's lives so there's this cliff edge moment where if you have assets of more than 23 250 quid which is a huge amount of people now you know and well that includes your house as well doesn't it no no no that exact precisely so yeah then you have to pay the full cost yeah of your care from that point now minimum of a grand a week right more likely more yeah so you burn through your and you will have to sell your house in a lot of cases right i mean most if not all certainly downsize um and the the point i i was just looking into this because i i thought well that means a lot of people are going to burn through the whole even if they do liberate all the equity in their homes they're going to burned through it very quickly well if you do and you know people are living longer and longer with with dementia if not with dementia you know whatever they're just living longer and but they need residential care the the the the the state is obliged to keep you in in a home but not necessarily the same one so imagine you've burnt through your entire family savings you're by this stage quite elderly and presumably pretty frail yeah and someone comes to you and says sorry you're gonna have to move 10 miles down the road to it now that's that's so you know and and finally you know that that as Burnham said yesterday um one of the consequences of this both shortage of supply and cost of supply is a massive and completely ridiculous pressure on the NHS you You know, lots and lots of people going to A &E for simple care needs and ending up on a trolley in a corridor.

14:01Yeah. So listen to this, Matt. My wonderful Auntie Betty, who lived to be great age. I think she was I think she was ninety nine, maybe when she died or ninety five. i'll have to but anyway a long long age yeah yeah but she ended up really in quite unsatisfactory circumstances she she suffered from dementia and um she uh her children um couldn't have no power whatsoever to decide her fate once she had been taken into the into the system and what was made absolutely clear to me is that you've got to if you're in if you are in this boat or you're about to become in this boat or even if it's potential you absolutely must get power of attorney power of attorney for your for your elderly parents right you get the kids get power of attorney or whoever you absolutely trust to look after you has to have power of attorney otherwise you have no say whatsoever in what happens once they are absorbed into this system and they can and they can stay in in you know really unsatisfactory uh accommodation and this i guess is is is the point is that so much of the state-funded accommodation or solutions are just not what you would want for your dear mom and dad and so you end up paying an absolute fortune and there was a woman on the radio this morning with the two women brilliant women um both detailing their current status and one of them has got two i think uh one of her parents and her parents-in-law both in care homes and she's paying 14 000 pounds a month right to to keep them in these care homes and they've sold two houses and they are still going to run out of money in three or four years they will and you know the other woman by the way Matt had spent 500 ,000 pounds in seven years right astonishing well I looked up the the average house you know the price of a of a occupied home at the moment and it's about 270 grand okay that's about the average um now on that basis how quickly do you burn through that money very very quickly and then you're at the mercy of the state and as you say matt you know if you haven't you know uh a lot of people haven't because they're not necessarily prepared for it haven't given power of attorney to their children or someone they trust they're at the mercy of people and by the way a lot of these uh even the ones that are state run are uh contracted out to these um really dodgy private equity fund homes right so you're at the mercy of both bureaucracy and what burnham quite rightly called profit profiteering yesterday so i mean just to re you know just to nail down that point you started off because it's it's so important if you get cancer when you're 80 yeah you will be cared for at the expense of the public purse for as long as it takes and rightly so and i think that one of the things the principles that binds this country together still is that okay i'm sure there are some people who don't agree but you know i think you've got a big set big buy into that principle But if you get dementia, basically what you do is you get private care under the or the auspices of the state, perhaps.

17:35But it's private care, but it's not insurance. It's pay as you go. It's out of out of pocket payment. Yeah. So you go from free at point of use, you know, care for cancer or emphysema or whatever it might be. But for dementia or sheer frailty, you are paying with all the money that you have saved. Now, so this idea that and I think what was significant yesterday was and he, you know, it was a very striking moment. He called out the Mail and the Telegraph. He named them. And he said, you know, every time you run a front page that says dementia tax, death tax, you know, you are skewing the argument and you are frightening people who have plenty to be frightened about anyway, which is a very good way of framing it.

18:23I mean, the idea that this represents what's being proposed in the reform, which is still in a germinal state. I mean, let's not pretend otherwise. But it somehow means new costs. It means different costs. But what it actually means in some shape or form. And this was what I was trying to write about in the magazine this week is the pooling of risk in areas where we need more and more to do so. because as much as we need to pull risk in health care and defence and climate change and education and all these other things where we don't think twice about that welfare, we need to do it with social care, too.

19:06And we don't at the moment. It is frightening. It is like the US system, with the exception that in the US, at least some people, not enough, but some people do have good health insurance. There isn't an insurance, a liquid insurance market for health, for social care in this country. In contrast to the two very brave and wonderfully positive, despite it all, women on Radio 4 this morning, on Five Live the other day, I heard, I think it was on one of like Nicky Campbell's show or whatever, interviewing a woman calls in and says, why should I pay for these people who haven't looked after themselves as well as I have?

19:49I've saved all my life. And honestly, I appreciate, I mean, dementia is not something you can, you know, it's not about exercise. It's not about diet. It's not about, you know, it's something that will hit a lot of us through absolutely no fault of anybody's. And I, and I appreciate this does make me an evil person. But I was sitting there thinking, I really hope you get dementia. Honestly, I really hope you have to sell your house and pay you arrogant, silly woman. You know, it's like terrible. And it's also a very dangerous road to go down because, you know, let's say, I mean, actually, you're right, of course, you know, dementia afflicts people for all sorts of complex physiological reasons.

20:29But a large number of health conditions, it could be argued, you know, are the result of bad decisions. Totally. You know, I mean, you know, should we not offer health care to someone who breaks their leg on a skiing accident or riding their bike? Or to or, you know, or to make it more complex. Do we offer lung cancer treatment to people who've smoked all their lives? Exactly. Yes. Yes, we do. Because we do. I mean, because life choices and diseases are just part of being a human being. And that's what the NHS is there for. You know, who will cast the first stone? Because, you know, preventive medicine is getting better.

21:11And public consciousness of how to look after yourself is getting better. But the fact is that, you know, everyone makes bad decisions in life, you know, and the idea that I hate that argument that, you know, why should I pay for it? Well, one reason you should pay for it is the golden rule, which is, you know, to your point, your time may come, love. Right. Yeah, it really, it really might. And the other is just that that means spiritedness, that some people are worthy recipients of care. and others aren't yeah is is a very ugly sentiment and it is there and it's always been there let's be honest there's always been a bit of that but it it has traction at the moment and I think that one of the reasons I'm glad that he had he Burnham has has come out running on this so early is because that needs to be nipped in the bud it is going to be a difficult conversation and I think it was interesting what he said yesterday is is clearly and this I guess we can go on and talk about in the second half but but it was obviously just a down payment I mean he said look he said the quote was I think more is possible from within existing resources right so he's going to try and bleed some of the waste out of it and and then he said he's gonna you know stop profiteering well he you know there are things that can be done in both those buckets right but having done this before and he said i've got the scars on my back to prove it when he was health secretary he knows perfectly well that this is not gonna happen without a new and uh radical funding model well well that was that's the substance of your piece in the magazine this week is about the required you know this is not about tinkering and it's actually it's it's not even just about stuff like social care no no no or education um and all of these things it is about a whole new deal for in in the rooseveltian sense for for britain you know we need a new contract we need across the board yeah and and those you know it is going to be a god almighty hard sell but i think there are things that he can do to to mitigate some of that kind of you know the instant electoral backlash against any idea that this stuff's going to cost you money mate you know that he's got to mitigate that by personalizing it by making people aware that this is all of our problem but also i think he is absolutely right to touch on the the privateering uh profiteering nature and when i hear you know that woman there on the radio saying you know so 14 grand for two parents so seven grand a month and i'm sitting there thinking how can that possibly be how can it cost seven thousand seven thousand pounds a month to to look after somebody in a home i mean i know property's expensive i know care's expensive i know meds are expensive but still you know it isn't it isn't labour costs because we know that care workers are scandalously unpaid and we also know I mean anyone who's visited a care home knows that in it you know frankly in the vast majority of cases the you know the the the they're pretty dilapidated the furniture is old the food is not fantastic you know they do they do what they can with the money they can and I think the people that work there are you know often absolutely amazing I mean genuinely amazing and have a vocation but you know the the funds that own them 85 percent of the homes in england and wales are privately owned it's a lot it's a scandal and and they and they are operated for a profit yeah yeah i mean look but it may if you can if you can go to an all-inclusive in turkey for a month for a grand a week you know how how how is it possible that a place of seven care home in burnley can cost seven grand a month it's it's possible because you're paying um you're paying someone in who runs a cayman island yeah right right private equity fund yeah a lot of money so they can have three homes so there's a brilliant um there's a brilliant case study on the cover it's our cover story this week about this astonishing dutch um dement it's called dementia village basically and it's a whole village that's been created for people suffering from dementia and it's good they've got their barbers they've got their news agents their restaurants and all of this but and it's not like you know the guy says he's at pains to say it's not like the truman show you know it's not yeah because i think you mentioned it to me i hadn't been aware of it but there are these places where they've got fake bus stops you know whether where people say i want to go home and they'll sort of pull them out to the bus stop and drop them off at the bus stop and then wait for them to forget why they're stood at the bus stop and then take them but so i mean so whether that's good or bad i don't know but it's not that it's a proper place with restaurants and so it's a bit and it's a business but everybody seems to be perfectly happy as happy as you can be they're well really well looked after and everything is set up for people with dementia and that i think could be could be a model for andy burnham to tick a few boxes which is to say we we can take this in-house we can make it a much better experience than it already is and we can get jobs and growth and we can build things and but we're serving this purpose which is a reality of all our lives now but but i mean and just to return to the point you made at the start which is that and he used this he used this phrase he said we need a national care service now what's interesting about that is that here you have mr devolution right yes well this this is the rule this is the area where he allows himself to be the centralizer and he's right right which is there are some things i mean the other big one is going to be housing because he's going to have to trample over local nimbyism you know to get the housing done but this is the big one which is at the moment one of the reasons that social care there are two problems it's radically disaggregated this is not a system that can go without proper national management and regulation it can be localized of course you know as everything should be but it can't be just you know at the moment it really is a postcode lottery and then some so it's a national care service and he kept saying he used this phrase it has to be very integrated right well what you're talking about there is something as big as bevan and the nhs yeah it was only yesterday that i thought oh my god he means it right you know thank god but it but the bigness of it suddenly dawned on me he means it and the consequence of that is twofold one is it's going to cost a bomb not in terms of the total spend but of how we extract it from people right and at what stages of their lives which is a big behavioral change but a very necessary and in fact a very i think less will be spent i think people will actually end up not having to give away their homes right yeah um but they'll have to do it over the course of their lives and the second thing is that he's going to have to get it passed you know there will be measures which require which are not in the manifesto which i think leads us on to subject b doesn't it yes it does um well should we come back to subject b after a short break okay join us for subject b in just a moment

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30:28Welcome back, dear listeners. Welcome back. We are discussing Andy Burnham's kind of high-velocity start to his premiership, and we've talked a lot about social care, but there are other indications that, as Matt, you just said, that he really does mean to instill radical change into the social contract. Now, the other thing that you kindly described it as the Kelly plan, which was because very early on, I mooted the idea that he would be much better off calling an early general election. Because on the basis that, you know, from a gambling point of view, he's going to have a tide of goodwill.

31:11He's going to hopefully pick up, which we've seen already in the polls, pick up some parity or even go past reform. and things might not get much better than that for him in in the longer in the sort of midterms you know he might in two or three years time he will inevitably be bogged down in the in the doing of all of this politics always there's always entropy in politics exactly right and as you are always at pains to point out the first six months the first hundred days these these are the moments that define everything and also you've got at the same time nigel farage wobbling like one of those wobbly toys and and no real indication that they're in any fit states amount a general election campaign with 650 credible candidates when they couldn't even find one credible candidate in makerfield anyway so now's the time then andy goes on to laura koonsberg and is asked directly are we gonna are we gonna have a snap election are we gonna have an early election late this year early next year and he says there he said the phrasing was precise wasn't it he said there is no there is i've tried to gather all the examples so far and on kunsberg he said there is no early election that's right yeah present tense yesterday he said there's no election on the horizon yeah okay yeah again very carefully chosen wording he but he said um i will stick to the manifesto in terms of the spending pledges now those two things can't be true they're in they are mutually exclusive they are mutually exclusive now i think and the same by the way this is why he's being a lot of people are saying you said but you said he's being evasive on the reaching three percent on defense by 2030 and people are saying but why would john healy want to become chancellor if that wasn't going to be nailed on well there really i think it's the same reason which is he can't inside the the box of the 2024 manifesto but i don't think that that's the manifesto he's thinking about so there are a couple of well the three main reasons i think that the kelly plan is still game on okay number one louise casey is not one of the reasons i think she's just one of the great public figures of our time is that she is not frightened of coming forward yeah and only a few weeks ago she was on the radio giving starmer the kicking of his life over his failure to get on with it over the rape gang inquiry okay yesterday she was on the the radio being very easygoing about well you know we'll we'll we'll this is we're doing the consultation now and then we'll talk to the prime minister about funding you know and and the push backwards what kind of funding she said well we'll get to that now that that she doesn't say things like that if she's not confident that the funding will be forthcoming and it literally cannot be under the 2024 so there's that secondly theresa may who i don't imagine is one of andy burnham's political heroes right but she said repeatedly in 1617 there wasn't going to be an early election until she said there's going to be an early election yeah and writing about it later She said, look, you know, you can't say I'm going to have an early election until you do, because the markets just go do lally.

34:39So, you know, yes, it's I suppose dishonest, but sometimes you've got to do what you've got to take one for the team. And the third thing was that and this is a micro thing, but it really struck me yesterday was I don't think he expects any. if Burnham expects anything to come from these cross-party talks on social care, I think he's right to announce them because I think the cross-party side of his persona is attractive. But the one person he praised twice yesterday, again, on the basis of what he'd said on the Today programme yesterday, was Ed Davey. He twice praised him. And I thought, oh, that is interesting, because what you're clearly thinking is i might need your 71 plus seats yes yes right yeah 100 so so the counter the counter to this because obviously i've been talking to a lot of well talking to a lot of people about andy burnham in general but i had a good a very good chat with a mutual friend of ours who knows the situation intimately how did you guess it was a man because that you maybe you are sexism reading my mind no i think you know who i'm talking about but anyway this friend of ours said to me um maybe there will be but don't underestimate the fact that he has lived through gordon brown uh thinking about this vacillating about it and and then bottling it and not doing it and he's very they were all sort of scarred by that experience wouldn't they scarred by the in the opposite direction well no no i think he i think he thought that the minute you start um the minute you even put it on the table then it can become a bad thing so it i think what was being suggested was that he might not even be going there internally that much the second thing is he will be very conscious of teresa may and the you know And blowing a majority like that, you know, that that will be front of mind.

36:44But then he said something which hadn't occurred to me. I think both of those two points are fairly obvious. But the thing that I hadn't really thought of, and this is what I was alluding to earlier when I was talking about party political interests getting in the way of national interests. he said you know it's a hard sell for a prime minister to tell his party members his his MPs yes I'm going to do this and by the way the inevitable consequence is that 40 40 or 50 of you at least will be out of work on the other side of it and and that will sit in people's heads you And does he want at this point to really undermine the solidity that he's managed to get, at least at face value within the PLP, by exposing a lot of them to the jeopardy?

37:38And the point that was made was that I think this guy, our friend, told me that in 80 seats of Labour's majority, the Tories finished second by less than 3%. And so it and I and I said, well, I'm Kemi's improving things. So maybe that 3 % disability said that's not the point. The point is just a little bit more votes to the Greens, a little bit more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And suddenly those seats are absolutely nip and tuck. So the electoral calculus, Andy Burnham, you and I sitting here thinking, well, would a Labour Lib Dem coalition be such a bad thing? Maybe it would be a great thing because Andy Burnham won't be thinking like that at all.

38:25I accept that. I accept that. But OK, let's go through those three points. right so if i was going to number 10 tomorrow with the number 10 north with the kelly plan under my you know as a spokesperson for the kelly plan right because you're because you're as my emissary yeah i i'm the conciliary i'm tom hagan right mr kelly never asks a second favor will be my point right uh so that's that's my point um if i go to bernard i say look i i gather you've got three reservations right yeah okay number one i don't actually believe the first reservation which is i think that um uh i mean well i know for a fact that the the tories thought they'd lose if gordon had gone early yeah and that that has got back to people like burnham and pernell his chief of staff right so i i'm i'm less persuaded about the second one uh the treason may precedent is a good one a good argument against however she she had the ill fortune or idiocy whichever you prefer to say to do it at the point that corbyn was at his peak and people forget how you know the sort of oh jeremy corbyn you know moments he'd seen off the mps in their leadership challenge he was at the height of his populist appeal right and may was not as good as burnham i mean that's another point um and at the moment uh you know farage who i suppose is the counterpart to uh corbyn in this case perhaps it's not as straightforward as that is on the canvas but he has amazing powers of recovery farage that's my concern is that yeah i i think he's in really really bad trouble really bad trouble and more and more keeps coming out about george Cottrell and you know it's and as you've said from the start bang on the five million quid thing that has stuck that has stuck there's no question that's the biggest yeah single statistic in British politics since the number on on the Brexit bus that's right it's a really big thing of that right so it's it's bad for Farage at the moment but we know that he has he has this incredible regenerative he's like the Wolverine of politics you know he regenerates so you can't be sure a year from now that he won't be back um so i'm i'm not confident about that the third one well that's the hardest one which is the plp um and i've said from the start i don't care about labor i just want reform to lose well that's easy as you say it's easy for me to say because i'm not prime minister with heading a labor majority in a parliamentary system i mean i think this is the test of burnham isn't it is does he want to be a successful labor prime minister or does he want to be a really consequential prime minister yeah because if he waits i do think political entropy whatever happens with reform will kick in and within the man and this is the crucial point within the terms and constraints of the 24 manifesto he will not be able to get that much done yeah so then you're heading towards a an election that he might win but it might not you You know, I mean, all the things that apply.

41:41So I think the question with Burnham is. Is he Blairesque in this sense that what he really cares is being prime minister and getting stuff done? Blair never cared about the Labour Party and it cost him, by the way, in a big way. But is Burnham a child of the Labour Party? Well, certainly more than Blair was, that's for sure. to the extent that he is just not willing to say well i'm sorry but you know i have to get defense across the line i have to get welfare across the line i have to get housing across the line i have to get social care across the line and i cannot do it on this manifesto or does he say to them now you make a good point you know maybe it is more important that you stay in your seat and keep your pension i don't know well i mean look the the two things about you know the scale of his ambition and his willingness to be this risky.

42:36And ruthless. Yeah. They totally go hand in hand for me because both of them at the end of the day come down to his character and his, whether or not he's got the guts to really go for it. And I've been working, I think we're both working on the basis that he understands the peril, you know, all around personal. I agree. But national national for all of us. And he understands that it's a turning point and he's got to it's shit or bust, folks. He's got to go for it. There is no alternative. And I think in that frame of mind, he has he's the only answer is an early election. to me yes no i i i couldn't agree more i mean i've as you know i've been a sick i was the first signatory of the kelly lat but i'm sure i won't be the last right um i mean yesterday it is very revealing actually to your point that he said yesterday um about the job he said well i don't know how long i'll be in it you know this is a person that's thinking given what's happened in the last 10 years you know i can't assume i'm going to be here for 10 i'd like to be here for 10 years but i have to be the other thing is that you know when he said his his politics was going to be place-based rather than party-based think that through right what is he really saying everyone attends to the place-based thing and they think that the party-based thing is just a bromide you know like everyone says but actually is he really saying i'm not gonna just do what Labour wants me to do yeah you know I I've done I mean he has done something which is I mean the cheekiness of it still blows my mind I mean he's you know it is the chutzpah of the guy what he's done is quite remarkable the ruthlessness of it you know the balls frankly um so he's got to there is he really gonna throw it all away just to keep the parliamentary party happy I don't think so No, I agree.

44:37And I have to say that I think one of the things about the Labour Party, which has, you know, has been a dominant force in my writing career. I love writing about the Labour Party and I love a lot of people in it. But it is it won't be told. Right. Yeah, it is. I mean, the Conservative Party, you know, has its own pathologies. But the Labour Party likes to think that what the Labour Party wants is, by definition, the right thing for the country. And oftentimes that has proved to be the case. You know, the NHS is a classic example of that. And then 97 election was another, which was we need to moderate the harshness of the Thatcherite inheritance.

45:21It was spot on. We needed a Labour government back badly. But it doesn't it's not always correct. And I don't think actually that the majority of Labour MPs, from my understanding of what they're saying and talking to some of them, quite get what a crossroads we're at. Yeah, yeah. Most of them think that if he can steer them back to a sort of well presented TikTok friendly centrism, reform will die away and everything will be fine. But the problems, only populism is a huge problem. But the problems he's confronting, social care, defence, housing, intergenerational, these are global climate change.

46:03These are global problems. They're not peculiar to us. They require big swings that are not just about party politics and electoral politics. They're about are you willing to drag this country into the 21st century? And I think he's the I actually think he's the first post Brown Blair leader of the century to really think in those terms, actually. Yeah, that's that's super interesting. I think you're right. And there's no question, whatever anybody thinks we I mean, we called for we called for this situation to come about for a long time. You know, we saw from a long time out that Starmer was not going to be able to move the conversation in this way.

46:44and so you know where we stand is a definite net positive on where we were we've seen the bounce in the polls you know there was a poll came out one of them was that labor were four points up on reform all of a sudden which is there great you know but um i am reminded of that great opening anecdote at the beginning of the film laine the uh the great paris um riot oh yeah where the opening the narrator says Paris in those days was like a man falling from a skyscraper and as he passed each floor he said to himself so far so good so good and Burnham's bounce he's going to come down to earth sooner or later there will still be something and money and it'll be money as well initially he's got to get he's got to resolve the absolute bind that Starmer has put the handcuffs he's put on it the fiscal handcuffs as you said earlier they are incompatible with all of the things he wants to do I mean in a sense it's choose you know it's it's does he want to be a prime minister who for the next three years says I'm going to stick to the Reeve Starmer manifesto but I promise at some point i'll make everything better yeah now that we're 10 days in okay at the moment it's fine because he's still new and shiny and he's bushy-tailed and he's so different to starmer that people are rightly interested and rightly positive and and i think that pole bounce is i think it's got content i think it's got heft but if by spring you know he's still saying have patience it'll be fine I've got to stick with the manifesto I'm not sure I'd go quite quick if I was him well we're agreed and we'll find out what happens he is after all above all other things he is a politician and politicians are drafty in their messaging I think one thing I haven't appreciated and I do think having known him a while as you have you know that manchester did it i mean robert carrow says power reveals right and i think that that's true and i think in manchester he discovered a kind of power that he oddly enough hadn't experienced as a cabinet minister you know nicola murray line in the thick of it i'm only a cabinet member you know um kind of kind of that you know he thought oh actually i can change people's lives yeah can actually do stuff i can do stuff you know and maybe i could translate some of those uh techniques not all but to the westminster scene and maybe if you know and i think that he has become not just ambitious for power but ambitious to be a change maker yeah i really i really do which doesn't mean he's going to succeed it doesn't mean that it doesn't mean anything but it means that he starts from the right with the compass pointed in the right direction that's right and i think it's i'll take that you know we haven't mentioned this but it's so relevant is the fact that he hasn't been in westminster for all these years he doesn't he hasn't been in the strangers bar you know chumming up with all of these people he he doesn't probably worry that much about the individual fates of labour mps yeah in the context of actually succeeding in the mission he set himself he's sure i mean he he definitely picked the right nine years to be out of London.

50:26Yeah, yeah, he did. Very good. Okay. Dear listeners, we'll find out whether we're right or wrong soon enough, but do let us know what you think. Please send in your questions, definitely. Any observations are always welcome to 2mats at tnepublishing.com. We do love to hear from you. And by the way, if you do like this podcast, then definitely sort of subscribe to it wherever you pick up your podcasts, but also So send a link to a mate who you think might like it because, you know, the more the merrier, frankly. So do that. And by the way, if you like this podcast, you'll love the New World magazine.

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