Andy Burnham takes over leadership of the Labour Party

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. How did a boycott Jimmy become a billionaire from posting videos? On Good Bad Billionaire, we're going to find out how the world's most popular YouTuber, Mr Beast, made his fortune. He's buried himself in a coffin for days. Counted to 100 ,000 on camera. And even recreated Squid Games, all in an attempt to go viral on the internet. But it all started when he gave a homeless man$10 ,000. So is he a philanthropist reshaping capitalism? Or is he just the king of the attention economy? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:39Hello, I'm Sean Lay. Thanks for downloading the BBC's World Tonight podcast from Friday the 17th of July. Andy Burnham says he's prepared to expend political capital on reforming social care. He tried once before as health secretary. The Conservative and Liberal Democrat with whom he negotiated tell us why it went wrong and whether Burnham Redux can deliver. The prospective Prime Minister says British politics took a wrong turn 40 years ago. Anne McElvoy and John McTernan debate whether the neoliberal inheritance shared by the mainstream parties has helped or harmed the UK. In Ukraine, public protests continue over the sacking of the Defence Minister.

1:17We have the first interview from inside a ministry said to be trapped in the Soviet past. Roland Butcher, the first black cricketer to represent England, pays tribute to Sir Garfield Sobers, with whom he played, who's died at 89. and a veteran of the first night of the proms on what makes tonight's election distinctively American. You're listening to The World Tonight with Sean Lay. After weeks in which it felt like a formality, today Andy Burnham finally took control of the Labour Party. It is therefore my honour to declare that the duly elected leader of the Labour Party is Andy Burnham. Shabana Mahmood, Chair of Labour's ruling National Executive committee making the announcement, the applause which followed continued for a full minute.

2:04For Andy Burnham, after two failed campaigns for the leadership, it's third time lucky. On Monday, he'll become Labour's seventh Prime Minister in 102 years, and only the second to get the job without a contest. The other leader, chosen by approbation, was Gordon Brown. Speaking at the headquarters of the Trades Union Congress, Burnham outlined what he believed his victory represented to the people who backed him. A return of the Labour they once knew. And now we answer that call. We will be that version of Labour again. We are united today and we put the power that comes from that unity at the service of people and places who have been waiting too long for politics to let them hope again.

2:54And that's what we're going to do, everybody. We're going to give them hope back. It was with an eye to recent history that Andy Burnham was speaking, pledging to undo 40 years of what he called neoliberalism. If we want an economy and a country that works for all people and places, which to me should always be at the very core of labourism, then it requires a new path to the one we've been on for the last 40 years. The government I lead will confidently lay that path out starting next week. And that is why this change today is the most significant change moment in our politics for 40 years. Well, Dale Vince is an entrepreneur who's made a successful business out of green energy.

3:44He's donated several million pounds to the Labour Party in recent years, and he was in the audience. Asked for his reaction. and he was he was himself he was very kind of normal grounded i would say he was he was passionate and humble at the same time and and purposeful he spoke with the real purposefulness about what he was going to do and the problems of britain it was at the tuc headquarters which i think itself is is perhaps a bit of a signal i'm not sure it's ever been done there before this kind of handover of power he said it'd be pro-business which i think mostly labor leaders say but i do believe But I have to say, I left the room excited, excited that we're about to start a new chapter and we could get some progress.

4:25Dale Vint surging the new Labour leader to be bold when he accepts office on Monday. From his speech in central London, Mr Burnham, the MP for Makerfield in Greater Manchester, headed to Gravesend in Kent. Much of his policy platform remains to be announced, but he has pledged to take on the notoriously difficult problem of changing the provision of social care. I think it's about being prepared to grasp the nettle. It'll take time, won't it? Well, you know, I've got personal experience of the system at the moment. My dad has Alzheimer's and you see, you know, what the staff have to put up with.

4:59It's not their fault. The system's broken. You can't leave social care like this. And this is part of my criticism of Westminster. It has flinched over the years from these big decisions. I tried to reform social care in 2010. In the end, it will require something difficult. But I think the British public would rather you kind of face them and said, you know what, we can't leave it like this. And in fact, the NHS won't get back to where it needs to be when you have a broken social care system that can't keep people out of hospital. So, you know, this is massive when it comes to the things that people care about.

5:35And I'm not going to do what Westminster has traditionally done, which is to kick the can down the road on this important issue. I will expend political capital on bringing forward a plan to fix social care. And I'm not going to waste time because every time that we waste another year, thousands and thousands of more people don't get the care that they need. He was referring there to his previous efforts. They were when he was health secretary back in 2009. And at that time, there were secret discussions on possible options for reform between him and the Conservative and Liberal Democrat spokesman back then, Andrew Lansley and Norman Lamb.

6:11The World Tonight has spoken to both of them. So Norman Lamb first. If you are going to effectively reform the social care system, I think it inevitably will involve more funding. And so the question then is, how do you secure that? Do you increase an existing tax? Do you introduce a new form of levy or tax? Germany and Japan, for example, introduced a tax from your 40s onwards so that you are contributing to a fund from that age towards the cost of care, if necessary, in old age. So there's that route you could take. You will remember that when Andy Burnham was Secretary of State, he had floated the idea of some sort of inheritance tax addition in order to fund social care.

6:59And it was that that led the Conservatives to attack him for threatening to introduce a death tax. Yeah, it became a theme in the subsequent general election in 2010. It did. And of course, I had been in the middle of trying to bring the three parties together and the whole initiative was destroyed. But I think that's what he's driving at. And he knows from bitter experience then that there are political risks in proposing something like an additional sum on inheritance tax to pay for social care. Can I ask you about Andy Burnham as a kind of operator behind the scenes? You both sit on a health devolution commission, which is a body that's looking at ways of integrating much more effectively the sort of public health side with the social care side, but kind of joining across to kind of get rid of these sort of silos that can exist in different parts of health and care.

7:53What are your impressions of him from that environment for the kind of arguably less high profile party political aspects of public life where a lot of kind of decisions are actually made where a lot of policy ideas originate? Yeah, it was interesting. So this was the early 2020s and Andy and I became the joint chairs of the Health Devolution Commission. And he was very good to work with. He was collegiate, very much non-tribal. We ended up bringing in a conservative from local government to become a joint chair as well. And he was very good at working across party and with people from interest groups as well who were not part of any political movement.

8:39And so my experience of that whole process was a positive one. And, you know, I think having not been particularly memorable for anything he did as a secretary of state when in government, I think he completely came into his own as mayor of Greater Manchester. and I think whilst some people choose to sort of denigrate that and to say it's very different being a Prime Minister, well, of course it is, that goes without saying, but I think actually you learn a lot of the skills doing a role of that sort, which can be translated to the national level. Sir Norman Lamb. Andrew, now Lord Lansley, was Shadow Health Secretary and Andy Burnham's Conservative opposite number at the time of those cross-party talks.

9:26He questions how far the present goodwill towards Mr Burnham will take him. Unfortunately, he needs financial capital more than he needs political capital in order to solve the social care problems. But, you know, on this day of all days, I guess, and this weekend, I hope he succeeds. I want him to succeed because he and I knew many years ago, 17 years ago, that if we didn't reform social care, we were going to store up mounting problems for the health service. And you know what? The subsequent 15 years demonstrated that in spades. So we were right to be looking for a solution. Now, of course, it wasn't likely to be the same solution because he and I approached it from quite different directions.

10:05Mine was much more an insurance based solution. His was much more a public service provider solution, you know, with a taxpayer funded solution. But many things we did agree on were things that are still true. So, for example, if you can integrate health and care providers more effectively, you can cut out a shed load of duplication. If you can look after people in the community more effectively, you can save a great deal of money on hospital admissions and hospital treatments. And actually, local government, as he should have discovered in the last decade, is the most effective place in which to try and improve public health.

10:39And that in itself can improve our chances where social care and health care are concerned, because we have relatively poor health in our communities. Norman Lamb, with whom you the two of you were involved in these secret private negotiations for some time, says that in the end they were detonated because there was an election coming. And the conservatives made a calculation that they could attack what was being talked about and label it a death tax. Well, it's interesting, isn't it? Because, of course, there was an election coming, so they were never going to last into and through an election.

11:12They were clearly going to be overtaken by that. But the truth is, of course, they were private discussions involving Norman, well, essentially me and Andy and then Norman. The point is my Conservative Treasury team didn't know they were happening. So, of course, once they thought they could attack the Labour Party for the cost of their social care proposals, which, of course, were openly talked about, they went ahead and did so because they didn't know that we were talking behind the scenes. The point is, he is someone who, under the right circumstances, could be expected to enter into some decent cross-party discussions with an objective coming up to a consensus solution.

11:51Is that a good thing? Yes, I would have said it was. Lord Lansley. Well, with me in the World Tonight studio is our political editor, Chris Mason. Chris, we'll talk a bit about social care in a moment, if we may. But first of all, your impressions, having watched him throughout the day, how prepared did he look and sound? He is, I think, revelling in the opportunities that awaits for him the other side of the weekend. It is simultaneously true, Sean, that he has been preparing for this moment and his team have on and off for 16 years. It's 2010 when his desires on Downing Street first became explicit and public when he ran for the leadership for the first time.

12:30So it's been underway slowly, very slowly for a long time. and it's been happening really quickly in vanishingly no time in the last few weeks because two things happened that might not have happened. One is Keir Starmer didn't face a formal challenge. He went of his own accord. The opposite could have taken longer. The second is someone could have challenged Andy Burnham and that process would have taken longer. So the sprint finish towards Downing Street has been quicker than they anticipated and has meant they have felt a bit rushed in that last stage of preparation. And there is room for stumbles, isn't it?

13:09I mean, let's take, for example, cabinet formation. He says he'll announce his team on Monday when he formally becomes prime minister. There is already, according to some of the media reports, a move among some in the party to try and discourage him from appointing Shabana Mahmood as chancellor. Yes. So whenever folk indulge, as folk at Westminster, as you know, regularly indulge and our World Tonight listener might be inclined to as well in a spot of fantasy cabinet. You only have to pursue that rather nerdy game for north of two minutes to realise how difficult it is when you start moving people around and have to account for, well, let's have a think, gender and geography and politics and experience.

13:50And that's just the four I've thought of just now. So take the prevailing wind that appears to be behind the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and her becoming the Chancellor. I should say that various sides say that nothing's nailed down yet. And it's only Friday. There are another four days. And there's plenty. And there was Andy Burnham say today he hadn't made any of these decisions. He later sort of clarified that about finalising decisions. But yeah, there has been a bit of a concern expressed by those more on the left and soft left of the party. By the way, though, from Andy Burnham's perspective, if we were all saying that the prevailing was behind Ed Miliband, there would be the equal and opposite concern from other wings of the party.

14:29That's the nature of governing. Yeah, so much for his hopes of there being no factualism. But a brief last thought, social care. How serious is he about this? He is serious. What we don't know is how quickly and developed are the plans that he wants to set out. So he is explicitly saying repeatedly that the status quo in England is unsustainable. but is he going to say something as limited as fast-forwarding the timescale of the current review or is there a more developed plan and a political willingness to make some big and potentially awkward leaps to try and start to deliver something in the remainder of this parliamentary term?

15:09That's the big question and we don't yet have the answer to that. Chris Mason, as ever, thanks very much for being with us. The cricket all-rounder, Sir Garfield Sobers, a legendary figure in the Caribbean cricket team, the West Indies has died. Sir Garfield's statistics are impressive. 93 test appearances over 20 years until 1974, scoring 8 ,032 runs and taking 235 wickets. But his impact on the game was arguably greater. He was a distinguished English county player with Nottinghamshire, where in 1968 he became the first cricketer to hit six sixes in an over in a first-class match. Oh, this is incredible.

15:48Now, this is six on the trot, it's a world record. And he's done it! He's done it! And my goodness, it's gone way down to Swansea. At the turn of the century, Wisden, the Bible of cricket, identified the five cricketers of the 20th century. Barbaden-born Sir Garfield Sobers was one of them. This was his reaction. When people look upon your career and your lifetime and honour you in the way in which I've been honoured, You always feel grateful when people can think of you that you have contributed so much to the sport that they're willing to honour you in such high esteem. And you can only be grateful for the people, especially the government and the people of Barbados and people in England and throughout the Caribbean for such great honours.

16:41Well, Roland Butcher, also from Barbados, played for Middlesex throughout the 1980s and is the first black cricketer to have played for England. Roland, thanks very much for being with us on The World Tonight. I know you knew Garfield Sobers. What are your memories of him? Sean, I think first and foremost, let me say a sincere condolences to Garfield Sobers' family and friends. Sir Garfield Sobers was, without doubt, probably the greatest cricketer that ever lived. That's not me saying that. I mean, all around the world, everyone you speak to who've played against him, who watched him over all of his entire career will tell you that Sigafri Silvers was the best.

17:20Nobody came close in terms of what he was able to do in a cricket field. He was not just a great cricketer. I mean, he was also a great human being, a man who was very humble. He knew where he came from. He knew of his meager beginnings. but he just had this extraordinary talent that he developed and became loved all over the world where cricket was played. Cricket lifted so many players from very poor backgrounds in the different islands of the Caribbean, didn't it? And Garfield is one of those players. Was he inspirational for others in the eyes, not just those who became great cricketers, but people more generally, do you think?

18:01Listen, Garfield, I'll tell you, is probably the most famous West Indian of anything, not just cricket, without doubt. I mean, he, you know, his exploits around the world, you know, everybody in the Caribbean knew exactly what he did and how he was treated around the world as a cricketer. So in terms of what he did, it was just unbelievable. I mean, as a kid growing up in Barbados, we were in awe of Cigarfi Sobers. You know, as kids in our informal games, we were Cigarfi Sobers. We called ourselves a Gary. We walked like him. We tried to play like him. So he influenced not just everybody in Boroughlin, but around the Caribbean.

18:41I love the way you mentioned his walk, because I saw a quote earlier from Jeff Boycott saying, I just love the way Gary walked out to bat. He was like a panther with a purposeful, loping and confident walk. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to say anything. Absolutely. I mean, he just had this walk that, if you saw it 100 yards of air, you would say that's a Gareth of Silvers. he was always immaculately dressed and then obviously with the extraordinary talent and had a great charisma and modest with him oh extremely modest listen, Scarfie Silver was a very humble man, anyone could approach for Gary and have a conversation he would never make anyone feel as if they were imposing for me, a real human being and he was a guy that for Cindy's cricket It will never be the same without the likes of someone like Sir Garfield Sobers, not just on the field, but as a man, I thought he was a tremendous man.

19:39Roland Butcher, former Middlesex County cricketer and England Test cricketer. Thank you very much for that tribute to Sir Garfield Sobers. Gary Sobers, as many knew him, he's died today at 89. How did a boycott Jimmy become a billionaire from posting videos? On Good Bad Billionaire, we're going to find out how the world's most popular YouTuber, Mr Beast, made his fortune. He's buried himself in a coffin for days. Counted to 100 ,000 on camera. And even recreated Squid Games, all in an attempt to go viral on the internet. But it all started when he gave a homeless man$10 ,000. So is he a philanthropist reshaping capitalism?

20:17Or is he just the king of the attention economy? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. On last night's programme, we discussed the sacking of Ukraine's defence minister. He was dismissed, said President Zelensky, because he and the armed forces commander couldn't get on. Today, that soldier, General Oleksandr Sersky, has urged Ukrainians to focus on the war and on effective strategy. There have been angry street protests over the sacking of Mikhail Fedorov, who'd only been in the defence job six months and who's not gone quietly. He's accused General Sersky of trying to split the country.

20:55Let's hear now from someone inside the Defence Ministry. Yuri Gudimenko chairs the Ministry's Anti-Corruption Council. He knows Mr Fedorov well, so I asked him what kind of man he is. He's a good guy. In my opinion, he was the best Minister of Defence of Ukraine for the long time of Ukrainian independence. Right. Without being facetious, you've had quite a lot of them in recent years. I mean, people haven't stayed in the job for very long. Is that a problem? You know, I am a chairman of the Public Anti-Corruption Council of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine for one and a half years. For this one and a half years, now we have the fourth Minister of Defense.

21:44It's a problem for all Ukrainian people. In my opinion, if you have a minister who decided to change everything inside the ministry, you can give him like two years or three years, but not a half of year. Ukrainian Ministry of Defense is the most huge and problematic ministries from all the ministries in Ukraine. Very big, very old and very slow. It's a very post-Soviet ministry, you know, with part of Soviet traditions. Right. And Mr. Ferdow trying to change everything inside of that monster. Is that part of the problem, that he was trying to fight too many battles all at the same time? Of course.

22:32I think it's the main part of the problem. Because if you minister and you fired one important person, this person may call to journalist, to office of president, And if you fire a lot of them, of course, you have a lot of enemies, a lot of them. Every single day you have new. To what extent is there a problem in the defence ministry with contracts going to well-connected companies and maybe those companies charging more than they should for the work they're doing? One of the biggest media attacks to Mr. Frodov was paid by one of companies that makes drones and lost their contracts. And the owner of this drone company paid for media attack on Mr.

23:28Frodov. And it was a huge scandal about it. Right. I mean, I noticed that in his public remarks after he was dismissed on Wednesday, he said, look, we've achieved this new ballistic missile test successfully. And we've also simultaneously saved 30 percent on the cost. The implication was that in the past there's been money unnecessarily wasted. Of course. Mr Fedorov's team is trying to change everything about the procurement system with absolutely transparency rules. And if they continue Ukrainian government and Ukrainian budget, because of this 10 % economy, 5 % part of companies will be lost this money.

24:17Let me ask you about Mr. Fedorov's relationship, or perhaps lack of a relationship, with General Sersky, the head of the armed forces. The president told members of his Servant of the People Party when he addressed them on this, that he was in an impossible position. He had two men, Fedorov and Sersky, who simply couldn't get on, and in the end something had to give. I mean, he had to get rid of one of them, didn't he? Mr. Fedorov and Mr. Sersky, of course, have a conflict. But it's not a personal conflict like, I don't like Mr. Sierski because I don't like, I don't know, his face. Yes. It's a conflict about, you know, like philosophy.

24:58It's a conflict about yesterday and tomorrow. Mr. Sierski is a symbol of yesterday's army. And Mr. Fodorov is a symbol of new army. So this conflict now is a conflict about symbols. That's Yuri Gudimenko, chair of the Anti-Corruption Council in Ukraine's defense ministry. It is approaching 28 minutes to 11. If you're listening to us live, that is the main headline so far on The World Tonight. The new labor leader Andy Burnham has promised the most significant political change in 40 years in his speech accepting the job. He'll take over as prime minister on Monday. The US military says as it's carrying out further strikes on Iran for the seventh night in a row.

25:39And Brenda Fricker, the first Irish actress to win an Academy Award, has died. She was known to TV audiences for her long stint as nurse Megan Roach in Casualty, which she acted in on and off over 24 years. She took the Oscar as Best Supporting Actress for My Left Foot. She also had a memorable role as a homeless woman in Central Park for Stooned with Pigeons in Home Alone 2 Lost in New York, with Macaulay Culkin as Kevin. What's this? It's a turtle dove. I have one, you have one. As long as we each have a turtle dove, we'll be friends forever.

26:19Clever.

26:23Thank you. I won't forget you. Trust me. Brenda Fricker, who's died at 81. A roar that precedes the silence as the 2026 BBC Proms get underway.

26:52Petroch Trelawney from Radio 3 capturing the anticipation at the first night of the Proms this evening. the annual BBC Classical Music Festival opened at London's Royal Albert Hall with a selection of music by American composers, or those connected with America. It's a nod to this month's celebration of the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago. I've been speaking with Leonard Slatkin, music director for the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, who's previously conducted the first night of the proms. I asked him first if he can define a distinctly American sound in classical music. American music that we roughly identify as classical is very much like the country itself.