In short
Andy Burnham’s first day as UK Prime Minister, what he’s walking into at Downing Street, and the early agenda for his government. The episode covers cabinet appointments, especially Chancellor John Healey; Burnham’s pledges (ending rough sleeping/homelessness, a “care of people” government, a 10-year plan); and the practical realities of governing (briefings, secure communications, limiting missteps). It also discusses foreign policy pressures, including Burnham’s first call with Donald Trump and a planned invitation to Manchester.
Guests (backgrounds)
Paul Harrison, former Number 10 press secretary to Theresa May (after 2017 election); Peter Walker, Guardian senior political correspondent.
Key claims
Downing Street is a “rabbit warren” with grand state rooms but cramped working space; PMs must handle nuclear-attack letters personally; early cut-through matters; Healey’s resignation gives plausible deniability; Burnham’s homelessness pledge is bold and visible; Trump calls require secure listening rooms.
Notable examples
nuclear deterrent “shred/keep” letters; Downing Street basement layout; Larry the Cat; rough sleeping numbers falling under Burnham as Greater Manchester Mayor; Healey’s sudden defence resignation over funding; Trump–May call dynamics and secure “listening room” procedure.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOAndy Burnham's First Day as PM
0:46 to 2:41
Exploration of Burnham's initial actions and responsibilities as Prime Minister.
“John Healy is Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I can tell you that was not expected.”
Inside Downing Street: A Personal Account
2:42 to 4:01
Paul Harrison shares his experiences and insights about the layout of Downing Street.
“Paul Harrison, you worked for Theresa May as her press secretary after the general election in 2017 while she was prime minister.”
The Psychological Impact of Living in Number 10
4:02 to 6:04
Discussion on the unique and stressful living conditions for a Prime Minister in Downing Street.
“So yeah, there is a bit of a facade inside that very grand black door.”
Public Life and Security for PMs
6:05 to 8:21
Analysis of how Burnham's public life will change due to security measures as PM.
“He was just there kind of as a civilian, actually, with his daughter.”
Meeting Larry the Cat: A New Dynamic
8:22 to 9:08
Discussion on the potential interactions between Burnham's dog and Larry the Cat.
“You know, there was a time during Brexit negotiations where everything seemed about as bad as it could possibly seem in number 10.”
Burnham's First Speech and Key Policies
9:09 to 11:26
Analysis of Andy Burnham's inaugural speech and his focus on homelessness.
“He's walked up Downing Street with his wife.”
Cabinet Appointments: John Healy as Chancellor
11:27 to 14:00
Discussion about Burnham's unexpected appointment of John Healy as Chancellor.
“How do you think that will land with people?”
Appointment of Healy as Chancellor
14:00 to 14:45
Discussion on the implications of Burnham appointing Healy as Chancellor.
“You know, and he would say he was standing on principle.”
Market Reassurance and Political Strategy
14:45 to 16:46
Exploration of Burnham's strategy to reassure markets and the appointment dynamics.
“Because, you know, defence procurement projects very, very often overrun and spend a lot more than they said.”
Importance of Early Days in Office
16:46 to 18:42
The significance of the new Prime Minister's initial days and the challenges faced.
“So it's always possible that he's made a deal with her, whereby she stays in the job, which is another one of the very, very big jobs, on the condition that she looks at scaling back some of that stuff.”
Show all 16 chapters
Communication Style of Andy Burnham
18:42 to 20:27
Analysis of Burnham's communication style and how it may evolve as Prime Minister.
“And what do you make about the way in which Andy Burnham communicates?”
Domestic Challenges Ahead
20:27 to 22:34
Overview of major domestic issues Burnham faces and the implications of his decisions.
“There's a load of architecture that isn't designed for the public domain.”
Foreign Relations and Initial Calls
22:34 to 24:51
Discussion on Burnham's approach to foreign relations and his first interactions.
“So you've got social security reform, where some benefits, the number of claimants is going up at a rapid rate of knots.”
Handling Calls from Trump
24:51 to 27:31
Insight into managing communications with Trump and the nature of those calls.
“Coming up, Andy Burnham has invited Donald Trump to Manchester.”
Public Perception and Future Outlook
27:31 to 28:01
Reflection on public sentiment towards Burnham and the need for effective leadership.
“Communications Chief, you seem kind of won over by Andy Burnham or certainly wishing him well.”
Analyzing Andy Burnham's Leadership
28:01 to 28:48
Explore insights into Andy Burnham's approach as the new Prime Minister.
“They had quite a good personal relationship.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Paul Harrison:This is The Guardian.
0:08Peter Walker:Today, Andy Burnham's first day in Downing Street.
0:18Peter Walker:Well, he finally made it.
0:21Paul Harrison:I have just come from Buckingham Palace, where I have accepted His Majesty the King's invitation to form a government.
0:35Peter Walker:On his third and most audacious attempt, Andy Burnham is Prime Minister. He's given his first speech in the job. But I can do something to give people some breathing space now, some help. He's chosen his cabinet. John Healy is Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I can tell you that was not expected. And now things get real.
1:03Paul Harrison:He'll go behind that black door and he will wander into the cabinet room and he'll see all those kind of sights that we've seen if we, you know, watch Love Actually. He'll do all of that, but one of the very first things that he'll do is he'll get a briefing from the National Security Advisor. And then this is a real kind of sober moment.
1:28Peter Walker:This is Paul Harrison, who worked in Number 10 for Theresa May.
1:32Paul Harrison:Almost certainly completely by himself, he'll sit in his office and he'll be given a set of letters and a shredder. And the letters are about whether we should respond in the event of a nuclear attack or we shouldn't. And they're duplicates, and there are four of each because we have four nuclear submarines that operate in the nuclear deterrent. This is basically a process that every new prime minister does by themselves. So he'll shred the ones he doesn't want and seal the others in envelopes.
2:05Peter Walker:So they're already written for him, are they? And he just has to sign them?
2:08Paul Harrison:Yeah, that's a huge decision that you've made. A few hours after you've gone to see the king and he said, OK, please form a government in my name. there'll be a lot of stuff where Andy Burnham will want to pause and look around and think about what he's achieved by getting there. I mean, it's an amazing thing. But also how much kind of hope and responsibility is now invested in him.
2:41Peter Walker:From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pitt. Today in Focus, Andy Burnham's in-tray.
2:52Peter Walker:Paul Harrison, you worked for Theresa May as her press secretary after the general election in 2017 while she was prime minister. Let's talk about what Burnham has just walked into because I think a lot of our overseas listeners will be quite surprised to hear that they'll have seen a picture of Downing Street but maybe they don't realise that it's not a purpose-built government building like the White House or the chancellery in Germany. It's like a cramped row of little higgledy-piggledy terraced houses, isn't it? Can you remember what you first thought when you knocked on that door and you were let in?
3:21Paul Harrison:As you say, it is very higgledy-piggledy. In fact, the further down below stairs you go into the basement, the more it looks like a collection of sort of abandoned wedding furniture that's not even from the same wedding. So yeah, it's very strange. It's a bit of a rabbit warren. Like lots of old buildings, the rooms aren't the same size, there are stairs that sometimes seem to go to nowhere in particular. And in some cases, it's very grand. So there are these amazing rooms upstairs, the state rooms, the ones that people will have seen on television when you see foreign leaders go and introduce themselves.
3:53Paul Harrison:But that is nowhere like the desk space that most of the people occupy. We were six to a room in the bit of the Downing Street press office that I worked in. So yeah, there is a bit of a facade inside that very grand black door.
4:07Peter Walker:And what about the living quarters? What are they like for the prime minister and his or her family?
4:13Paul Harrison:Bits of them are quite spacious, actually. There's sort of some kind of double height ceilings and they look a bit grand in portions, but also effectively they're smashed into the middle of the building. So they don't start on the ground floor or finish right at the top. They're kind of a flat that's inserted halfway up, both above number 10 and above number 11. And obviously, prime ministers and chancellors, depending on how big their families are, might have chosen to swap those two places around. Everybody is given a small, certainly by the standard of other countries, allowance to redecorate and paint, put up wallpaper, whatever.
4:50Paul Harrison:So they may be a bit different now since they were in Teresa's day. There's a strange psychological component of the whole thing, which is that imagine you have a really busy job, you're the chief executive of a big firm, which effectively the PM is. And then we say, well, you can live here for free, but it does mean that you are at our absolute beck and call all the time because you live just above the cabinet room so you're in this strange situation where you can't ever really escape the duty of the job which is would probably be true if you were living somewhere else but you also can't really escape the stress so you come downstairs to the place that you're having the meeting that you're worried about that day because you're chairing cabinet and it's tuesday or you're thinking about National Security Council and the things that you'll probably see and be told there and you live 30 yards away from where all that happened.
5:46Paul Harrison:So that's an experience that not too many other people get.
5:50Peter Walker:Yeah, the way you describe it, it sounds quite claustrophobic. And when I think about how Andy Burnham has lived his life in Greater Manchester for the last nine years, he's been a pretty free agent. You could just see him wandering around. Sometimes he'd have an aide with him. He used to go to gigs with his eldest son. I saw him once in a protest. He was just there kind of as a civilian, actually, with his daughter. He goes for runs, goes to walk his dog. Is that all over for him now?
6:14Paul Harrison:It's over in large part in terms of how easy he'll find to do that. And also, he just won't ever go anywhere unaccompanied again.
6:23Peter Walker:Really? He'll never be alone again, will he?
6:27Paul Harrison:Almost certainly not. I mean, within number 10, it's slightly different because Obviously, there are armed guards. And, you know, it is a bit of a fortress in itself. So the PM's protection won't follow him around from room to room in the building. But anytime you step outside, you'll be in a convoy of cars. There'll probably be motorcycle outriders. You'll certainly have close protection people, universally referred to by everyone who works in number 10, the cops. You know, they will just be with you all the time. So, you know, I think Teresa said to me once that the day she became Home Secretary, she never drove a car again.
7:05Paul Harrison:And, you know, Andy Burnham will have to get used to that. He can go for a run around St. James's Park if he wants to. And I saw a nice video of him jogging with Mo Farah in London. But if you'd planned out in that shot, there would have been a couple of guys dressed the same as you, but bigger, running behind. And that will be his life now.
7:26Peter Walker:Yeah.
7:26Paul Harrison:Forever.
7:27Peter Walker:And I mentioned that the Burnhams have got a dog. It's a dog called Axel. How do you think he will get on with Larry? Larry the Cat, who has outlasted, I think, seven prime ministers now?
7:38Paul Harrison:Larry the Cat is doing fantastically well. So, I don't want to make myself unpopular. I like animals. Larry the Cat is not particularly friendly. Is he not? So, no. Any challenge to Larry's dominance will not be well received. uh he's a little bit he's a little bit scratchy a little bit bitey so yeah although i mean he is he's an old cat now he's getting on so maybe he has mellowed but in my day you know there was a particular chair that he liked to sit in also he's obviously got a sense of theater because churchill liked to sit in it as well um and you know woe beside the person who tried to move him Also, you don't want to be the person where, you know, you're in charge and Larry decides that maybe the end is nigh or close.
8:28Paul Harrison:You know, there was a time during Brexit negotiations where everything seemed about as bad as it could possibly seem in number 10. And also Larry was quite unwell. Oh no. Yeah, he went to the vet several times. And that was, I mean, that was probably 2018 now. Oh wow. So he's doing well.
8:43Peter Walker:Yeah, he is.
8:51Peter Walker:Peter Walker, your senior political correspondent at The Guardian, a familiar voice to our listeners. Thanks for making time for us. A pleasure. And welcome to life under Andy Burnham's Britain. I know, a new dawn. And so Andy Burnham has achieved his goal. He's met the king. He's got the job he's always wanted. He's walked up Downing Street with his wife. He's given his first speech. What did you make of it? But the bits that struck me was, first of all, his immediate acknowledgement that the response of lots of people watching this, lots of voters are going to be, what, this again? And he acknowledged the fact that this turnover of PMs is not sustainable.
9:28Peter Walker:And he's, as he put it, the generation of politicians of which he's a part is to blame. So he said the first thing is we will do better. There will be a plan.
9:38Paul Harrison:Later this year, I will bring forward a new plan for Britain, a 10-year plan.
9:49Peter Walker:As ever with Andy Burnham, the specific plans were currently slightly vague, but there wasn't the most striking policy thing, was this thing where he said, homelessness will end.
10:00Paul Harrison:I will soon go through that door behind me and issue my first instruction to end rough sleeping in our country.
10:14Peter Walker:And as you know this very well, when he became Greater Manchester Mayor, he said he would do that. The numbers went down. Some argue because partly because of Covid and now the numbers have since been creeping up. and his people will say that's because as a mayor you don't have an impact on the kind of national policy stuff so housing allowances asylum seekers being kicked out of where they live you know these are the kind of things as a mayor you can't control so he now has his hands on these enormous policy levers and can do it so he's obviously decided becoming prime minister with only a slightly funny mandate isn't difficult enough on its own i'm going to add this extra task but I think it's bold and I get the feeling the country's maybe ready for a bit of boldness yeah I was quite surprised when I heard it because it's you know as you know I basically got a PhD in burnimology after all those years watching it up close in Greater Manchester when I was Northern Editor and he began so bold in 2017 saying I'm going to end rough sleeping and that language evolved over the nine years he's been there to end the need for rough sleeping so I thought it was very interesting he's gone so hard on that issue on day one in the job and And I just wonder for how many people that would be a priority, a real pressing issue in their life.
11:26Peter Walker:What do you think? How do you think that will land with people? I suspect that if you were to get people to write down a list in a blank piece of paper of what their most important priorities are, I don't think ending homelessness would be on even their first A4 page. But I think it's one of those things which if you present it as a list, do you think ending homelessness and rough sleeping is a good idea? then most people would go yes. But I think it goes more than that. I think it's something which is a visible sign of a society that's not quite right. So it's a visible sense of the country perhaps not doing as comprehensively well as it could.
12:02Peter Walker:And it ties into his other big pledge in a speech, which is this is to be a government which is based on basically kind of people. It's about putting the right values
12:12Paul Harrison:and the right standards at the heart of government. I will put the care of people at the heart of everything I do.
12:24Peter Walker:I will give this my all and I ask you all to pull with me.
12:30Paul Harrison:Let's build a new national sense of unity, of common purpose and positivity.
Read the full transcript
12:40Peter Walker:Trying to tap into the humanity of people. hope was a word that he uses quite a lot. And he knows he probably has a limited amount of time in which to do that. I think it's quite clever. You can understand it very simply. And he's given himself a target by which he's happy to be judged. And I think voters will quite like that.
13:05Peter Walker:And at the time we're recording this, Burnham has begun appointing his cabinet and there was a big surprise, wasn't there, in his pick to be his chancellor. John Healy, not exactly a household name, an MP for Wentworth and Connersbury, which is just north of Rotherham in South Yorkshire. Tell us about him and what do you make of his appointment? He was the defence secretary throughout the Stamberg government until literally a matter of weeks ago, where he resigned in a very sudden move that surprised a lot of people. He resigned because he said this longstanding kind of defence investment plan the government had been putting together over many, many months, didn't have enough money.
13:42Peter Walker:And he's quite authoritative. I mean, what is interesting is that up until quite recently, he would have been seen as quite a kind of loyalist to Keir Starmer, in that he was in Starmer's cabinet all the way through. But the fact that he resigned gives him a kind of plausible deniability from a Starmer project. You know, and he would say he was standing on principle. It sometimes offers you this kind of second chance. And I guess Healy has got some relevant experience, albeit quite a long time ago. He was the financial secretary to the Treasury under Tony Blair. Then he was housing secretary under Gordon Brown.
14:20Peter Walker:Do you think that by appointing him chancellor, Andy Burnham has actually given him something very difficult to do, which is to say, all right, you said that defence needed billions and billions and billions more. Good luck. Here you are. Here's the Treasury. Find the money. I mean, to an extent, the defence job is very figures based because you spend a huge amount of your time looking at all these multi-billion pound multi-year projects and wondering where the hell the money has gone. Because, you know, defence procurement projects very, very often overrun and spend a lot more than they said.
14:51Peter Walker:So that's quite good training. I don't think he's brought him as a kind of hostage necessarily. I think he's brought him in just to try and reassure the markets. We always talk about the markets as if it's this kind of amorphous thing. But there is a worry, certainly amongst Team Burnham, that we have this history lesson of what happened under Liz Truss. You know, if they get spooked, if the herd gets spooked, then they do. And that can be incredibly difficult to get back. Ed Miliband would probably have been Burnham's first choice. It was almost certainly the first choice of lots of people around him.
15:21Peter Walker:But there was just this thing. it's this reflex problem that lots of people in Labour have, which is they worry about what the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail front pages are going to be. And those in themselves are not necessarily influential, but they can influence other people. And Ed Miliband has been moved from the Energy Department to be promoted to the Foreign Secretary. He replaces Yvette Cooper. What do you make of that appointment? I think it's something which obviously I think Miliband wanted chancellor, but it's one of the other great offices of state. And it's an interesting one. You get to fly around the world.
15:58Peter Walker:And it's most importantly, one that could be sold to Miliband as a promotion, as Ed, we really need you this. You know, this is a bit of a weakness for me, but you've been around the block, you've led Labour, you know what you're doing. You know, we really need you to do a good job. And foreign policy is not the sideline it once was. And, And Miliband is quite affable. He's got quite a lot of charm, so I imagine he'll do it quite well. And there was a lot of speculation in the last few days that Shibana Mahmood would be the new Chancellor and instead she's staying put as Home Secretary. Do you think we can see this as Burnham endorsing what people certainly on the left would see as her fairly harsh immigration policies, making it much more difficult for immigrants to settle in the UK?
16:42Peter Walker:He's endorsing it to an extent. He's certainly endorsing the tone. The interesting bit is going to be whether he endorses the detail, because even during the Makefield campaign trail, he was saying to journalists that there were some aspects of the immigration reform, particularly the retrospective changes to indefinite leave to remain, that he wasn't particularly pleased with. So it's always possible that he's made a deal with her, whereby she stays in the job, which is another one of the very, very big jobs, on the condition that she looks at scaling back some of that stuff.
17:21Peter Walker:so paul just how important are these first few hours these first few days and weeks in the job in terms of getting your message out there and really setting the tone for what's to come
17:32Paul Harrison:they're really important they're really important and so that for a few reasons one you've just got a lot of people who will be interested because of the novelty about what you're going to do so people will be falling over themselves to offer you interview space and time. But also people will be paying attention when you make that first speech. That's a big kind of cut through moment. And those cut through moments in the modern media, politicians really prize. They're a huge asset. So that's really important because you've got a lot of attention. It's also kind of important because you need to limit your missteps.
18:05Paul Harrison:You're introducing yourself to the country again. Andy Byrne has been a cabinet minister, but quite a long time ago now, and people very reasonably have short political memories. So if you think of him as a politician at all, as you said, you'll think of him as the mayor of Greater Manchester. He's coming onto a new stage now and doing a load of new things that he won't have done before. So limiting your mistakes is also important, partly because you're at the moment where you've got the greatest amount of power that you're probably ever going to have as prime minister, but you've also got the least amount of experience.
18:35Paul Harrison:And that's true of everyone around you too. So the 25 or so special advisors that will be part of Andy's team in number 10.
18:42Peter Walker:And what do you make about the way in which Andy Burnham communicates? And, you know, he's been writing all of his own speeches in Greater Manchester. He does like to be able to speak off the cuff a little bit. Are those days gone now that he's Prime Minister, do you think?
18:55Paul Harrison:They haven't gone. I suppose the extra emphasis that, with all due respect of being Mayor of Greater Manchester, which is a very important job, he will just be a lot more time poor now. People will fight over five minutes of his diary. There will be arguments about exactly what he does and for how long after Prime Minister questions before he goes back to number 10. So that will put limits on how much he's able to be the author of everything that goes out in his name. The communication stuff, though, I think lots of people have said is an asset. And I tend to agree with that. He's got a kind of folksy charm.
19:32Paul Harrison:and something that somebody said to me the other day, who is also a veteran of my kind of political era, said sometimes voters like it when they think that they see someone who's enjoying the job and you get that sense from him.
19:49Peter Walker:See also Zora Mamdani, right?
19:51Paul Harrison:Yeah, exactly. People who feel like...
19:53Peter Walker:Or Trump, actually.
19:55Paul Harrison:Yeah, I mean, there is no one in modern politics who's enjoying himself as much as Donald Trump, rightly or wrongly. But yeah, so I think, you know, that's something that he'll want to recapture. The burdens of office are very heavy. And I've, you know, I've seen one person struggle with them up close. But I think voters, while they're sympathetic to that, they also want solutions. We hear so much about the idea that the country is essentially ungovernable.
20:23Peter Walker:Yeah.
20:24Paul Harrison:No decisions are good. Pain is inevitable. maybe what we want is for someone to come in and say i can't change everything immediately but i've got a plan here's how it's going to work and i don't feel overburdened in doing it
20:39Peter Walker:i wonder how much are you setting the agenda versus responding to stuff happening and stuff can happen at any point in 24 hours so yeah how much will you find he's just sort of firefighting
20:55Paul Harrison:a lot i mean one of the things that's peculiar about pm is the difference between i suppose what people think it is and what it actually is and a lot of the really big decisions that you make people don't see so you spend a lot of time interesting on the phone to foreign leaders and the number 10 press office will do a kind of three paragraph readout which won't always be totally representative of how difficult that call was or how rewarding that call was you'll do National Security Council at least once every two weeks. There's a load of architecture that isn't designed for the public domain.
21:32Paul Harrison:And so most people are sort of oblivious that it happens, rightly. Then there's also the extent to which you can be proactive and get out your message and how that's balanced against having to be reactive and feeling at the mercy of events. I suppose the art, really, of the job, or part of the art of the job, is knowing how you can sometimes use those events to shape your agenda, or sometimes things present an opportunity.
22:12Peter Walker:Peter, before Kirsten Armagh came into Downing Street two years ago, he famously got his then Chief of Staff, Sue Gray, remember her, to come up with a list of issues that might trouble him in his first few weeks. And this list was called, excuse my language, the shit list. Sue Grazer reportedly been advising Burnham in the past few weeks. What do you think is going to be on this shit list? Let's talk domestic issues first. So you've got social security reform, where some benefits, the number of claimants is going up at a rapid rate of knots. Defence is something that's even more salient. you have not just this defence investment plan, but the fact that the spending on it, certainly beyond the next couple of years, is slightly vague.
22:54Peter Walker:So Andy Burnham has promised to meet the commitments in the defence investment plan. He now needs to find the money to do it. And these are very, very big sums. An extra 4.7 billion he's going to have to find. What else? More widely, the cost of living and energy prices. These are things he said he's going to do something on very, very quickly. And people are waiting for that. And tying into that is this ongoing argument about North Sea oil. The Conservatives are convinced if we drill for North Sea oil, then we'll become energy independent overnight and that energy prices will drop. Economists and energy experts have a slightly dim view of that.
23:29Peter Walker:It's the sort of thing which would stop the Conservatives from saying, you know, he hates the modern world, but at the same time won't actually probably make a huge amount of difference. And all the signs are that Andy Burnham is going to concentrate primarily on domestic issues. nonetheless you know he's going to be our world leader and he's going to have to get involved in all kinds of tricky geopolitical issues and somebody's going to have to get on side is Donald Trump. His very first phone call on Monday with a foreign leader was with Donald Trump and Burnham reportedly invited him to Manchester despite Trump dismissing it as some town just a few weeks ago and it seems that this meeting may coincide with the G20 meetings of world leaders which the UK is hosting.
24:12Peter Walker:How do you think Burnham is going to deal with foreign relations? I mean, I think when he took office, Keir Starmer was hoping to focus on domestic issues mainly, but events got in the way and Andy Burnham is arriving in probably an even more turbulent time. You've got the Iran war reigniting and the potentially massive implications for cost of living. Donald Trump is still there. One of the advantages that Burnham has got He's keeping on Jonathan Powell. He's basically the font of all knowledge of foreign policy in the UK. He's a national security adviser, was under Starmer, and we understand he's going to keep the same job.
24:50Peter Walker:And he is going to do a lot of the foreign policy grunt work. Coming up, Andy Burnham has invited Donald Trump to Manchester. But how should he manage the unpredictable president?
25:16Peter Walker:So, Paul, what happens when Trump calls? You were presumably there when Trump called Theresa May. Does he just ring the Prime Minister's mobile? How does it work and how did those calls pan out when you were there?
25:28Paul Harrison:The White House security kind of insists that those calls don't happen on open lines. So there's a listening room downstairs past the mismatched old wedding furniture. there's a listening room downstairs in number 10 where you're not allowed to take your phones in, so it's a secure environment, and you go in there to listen to the call. The PM will probably take it in his office because that's also secure. So there'll be a host of people on mute on both sides listening to these two guys.
25:56Peter Walker:I'm just imagining that your face is like...
25:59Paul Harrison:I mean, in my day, the Trump calls were very well attended compared to some others between other leaders.
26:07Peter Walker:Trump and May had a weird relationship, didn't they? I remember him trying to hold her hand, going up some steps one day. What advice would you have for Andy Burnham in how to deal with Trump?
26:16Paul Harrison:I think there's a bit of, I don't know what you'd call it, but if you're going downstream in a sort of turbulent whitewater rafting situation, paddling every now and again will do more harm than good. And the call sometimes felt a bit like that. Sometimes Trump would go off on some kind of tangent, usually to do with golf courses, but not exclusively. And every now and again, the worst thing to do would be to try and bring that hastily back to some sort of conclusion. The better thing was to let that play out and then say, I really wanted to talk to you about Syria. And he'll learn his own rhythm of that.
27:02Paul Harrison:So it's all to play for. But joking aside, that's a really important call. That's a really important relationship. And it's one of those quite sobering things that Andy Burnham will do, where his staff will have to go to a specially built room so that no one can tap into the call. And he'll be sitting there on the phone to the president of the United States, having been connected by a White House switchboard who will say, please hold for the president. It's a pinch me moment and he'll have quite a lot of those in the next few days, I'm sure.
27:30Peter Walker:And finally, hearing you talk, it strikes me that despite you being a former Conservative Communications Chief, you seem kind of won over by Andy Burnham or certainly wishing him well.
27:42Paul Harrison:I think lots of people will be in that position, even if they couldn't imagine themselves voting for him. For two reasons in my case, I guess. One, I used to work for Jeremy Hunt as well. So that was my path to number 10. I was a Special Advisor at the Department of Health. And Andy Burnham, as well as having been a former health secretary in government, was also Jeremy Shadow for a bit. They had quite a good personal relationship. I think when you read and see people say, Andy's a nice guy, one, I think he wants to come across that way. But two, in my experience, it is true. He is a nice guy.
28:16Paul Harrison:But I suppose, coming back to that idea that he's the seventh prime minister in just over a decade, we kind of need someone to take this by the scruff of the net now and get it done, don't we? People want to be led. People want solutions. And we're at a difficult moment for the country and we have been for a while. And it seems like he's kind of got his diagnosis right about that. He seems to understand that. And if he can marry that with some policy wins and some points of difference, you know, who knows? But we do wish him well.
28:48Peter Walker:Brilliant. Let's leave it there. It's been so interesting to talk to you, so thank you so much. Later.
28:55Peter Walker:That was Paul Harrison. My thanks to him and to Peter Walker. You can follow all of our coverage of Burnham's premiership at theguardian.com. And that is all for today. This episode was produced by Ruth Abrams, Guy Zafman and Belinda Gurung and presented by me, Helen Pidd. Sound design was by Rudy Zagadlow and the executive producer was Sammy Kent. We'll be back in your feeds this afternoon with the latest.
29:24Paul Harrison:This is The Guardian.
